Why Talking to AI Can Make You Feel Lonelier

We can feel deeply connected to celebrities, fictional characters, and even AI chatbots, even though we've never met them in real life. But when do these one-sided relationships start interfering with our happiness? In this episode of Office Hours, I explore the science of parasocial relationships, how our attachment styles influence them, and the potential consequences of turning to AI for companionship. I also share three ways to manage unhealthy attachments and make more room for the real-life relationships we need. *** Are you interested in helping others through the science of happiness? I have a new three-day program—⁠learn more here⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/happiness-scale-certification. — Brought to you by: • LMNT http://drinklmnt.com/Arthur—A science-backed electrolyte drink mix that helps you feel and perform your best, without sugar, artificial ingredients, or gimmicks. Get a free sample pack at DrinkLMNT.com/Arthur http://drinklmnt.com/Arthur. • Helix Sleep https://go.helixsleep.com/audio-partner/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=brooks—A mattress designed for every body. Go to helixsleep.com/brooks http://helixsleep.com/brooks for 20% off sitewide for their Black Friday Sale—an exclusive offer for listeners of Office Hours. — Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://arthurbrooks.com/ • In-person Retreats: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://retreats.arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://retreats.arthurbrooks.com/ • Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (05:40) What the data shows about using AI to alleviate loneliness (09:36) What are parasocial relationships? (16:45) How attachment style impacts parasocial relationships (23:20) #1. Pay less attention (26:19) #2. Break up (30:13) #3. Learn more about your attachment style (31:27) Q&A: Dealing with anhedonia (34:48) Q&A: Balancing satisfaction and enjoyment — Referenced: • Arthur’s newsletter:https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • The Happiness Scale:https://learn.arthurbrooks.com/the-happiness-scale • The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks:https://www.thefp.com/s/the-pursuit-of-happiness-with-arthur • Magnifica Humanitas: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html • How AI and Human Behaviors Shape Psychosocial Effects of Extended Chatbot Use: A Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Study: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.17473 • Talk, Trust, and Trade-Offs: How and Why Teens Use AI Companions: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/talk-trust-and-trade-offs-how-and-why-teens-use-ai-companions • Iain McGilchrist: https://channelmcgilchrist.com • Mass communication and para-social interaction; observations on intimacy at a distance: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13359569 • The Beatification of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen: https://www.archny.org/the-beatification-of-archbishop-fulton-j-sheen • ... References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Ultra running shoes are all about space, the space to go further, to feel better, to do something you never thought possible. And this space starts with Ultra Fit. Unlike traditional running shoes, Ultra Fit gives toes more room to move naturally. So every step is strong, balanced, and comfortable. Whatever you're lacing up for, stay out there with Ultra. Shop now at ultrarunning.com. That's A-L-T-R-A running.com.

• 0:30Arthur Brooks?

  I want to talk this week about a trend that everybody's aware of, about your relationship with chatbots, with AI. I want to talk about the growing trend of people to have. When I say relationships, I mean real relationships. Lonely people turn to AIs as conversation partners as if they were actual human beings to alleviate the sense of loneliness. What we need when it comes to love and relationships is right hemispheric mystery and meaning. And what we're trying to do is to meet our right hemispheric needs with our left hemispheric technology. And it fools us temporarily, but it doesn't actually work. And our brain knows. You have a relationship with a chatbot that's actually making life a little bit worse?

• 1:13Arthur Brooks?

  Maybe you didn't know until now that this was a problem? What should you do?

• 1:24Arthur Brooks?

  Hi, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about love and happiness, how you can get more of it in your life and bring more of it to other people's lives as well. Thank you, as always, for sharing the information in this show with as many people as, well, you feel comfortable sharing it with. I need an army of happiness professors along with me. And you don't need to waste many years of your life or spend many years of your life, I should say, getting a PhD to do just that. On the contrary, there's so many ways that the science of human happiness can be understood and shared with other people. That's the mission of this show. Please, if you like this episode, please like it wherever you're watching or listening to this. And do subscribe. If it's something that you like to get and you would like to get it more often, please do subscribe so it will come to you automatically.

• 2:09Arthur Brooks?

  Also, in terms of getting more information like this, you can look at back episodes of Office Hours. If you haven't watched all of them, there are now, there are a lot in the can over the past more than a year at this point. And do subscribe to my newsletter. You can get that by going to my website at arthurbrooks.com and subscribing to the newsletter. It will come to you every Friday free in your email. And that's information that's not copying the podcast at all. On the contrary, it's always on a different topic each week. It's on Fridays, sending you into the weekend, 300 to 500 words preceded by kind of what's going on in my work and touring and maybe some pictures and dad jokes and see what you think. About 300,000 people are getting it every week, as a matter of fact, at this point. Thank you for staying with us.

• 2:54Arthur Brooks?

  I really, really value you as people who are interested in this and sharing with other people as well. I want to talk this week about a trend that everybody's aware of that is pretty alarming. And in point of fact, this is something that you have been asking me to do a show on for about six months. And so now's the time. I needed to do the work. I needed to do the research. And now I'm ready to talk about your relationship with chatbots, with AI. I want to talk about the growing trend of people to have. When I say relationships, I mean real relationships. According to Pew Research Today in 2026, 47% of American teenagers say that they use AI for fun or entertainment. Okay, so far, so good.

• 3:39Arthur Brooks?

  One in eight adolescents and young adults in the United States is now turning to AI chatbots for mental health advice. This is more alarming. Now let's turn to data from the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, which published a report in 2025 through Common Sense Media, and that was looking at teenagers, mostly high school aged kids, that why are they using AI? And most do. 33% of them say it's for social interaction or relationship building. Social interaction with who? 18% say general conversation, 12% role playing or imaginative scenarios, 9% as friend or best friend, and 8% for romantic interactions.

• 4:24Arthur Brooks?

  Now, this is a growing trend. I know 8% is not 80%, but the truth of the matter is that's still a lot. And the fact that one in eight US adolescents is actually using chatbots and large language models for mental health advice, is that a problem? I mean, is that something we should be concerned about? Is that going to affect our mental health, our well-being, indeed, our happiness? That's not just young adults either. I'm finding more and more people my age are creating these relationships with these sort of humanoid entities. If you are, you know, following what I've been doing over the past six months, you know, you might know that the Pope, Pope Leo in Rome, he wrote an encyclical,

• 5:08Arthur Brooks?

  that's just a letter to the entire Catholic Church, called Magnifica Humanitas, magnificent humanity, writing about AI. And he said, you know, AI is coming. It's inevitable. You know, the Pope is not, you know, living in La La Land. He knows what's going on. But he says that the point of it should be to make us more human and not less human. Does treating AI effectively like a human conversation partner, even an advisor or friend, to get, you know, the girlfriend or boyfriend experience, does that make us more or less human? Does it make us more or less happy? That's what I want to talk about today. And then I want to talk about how we should understand it. Now, there is no clear trouble with using AI for basic information,

• 5:53Arthur Brooks?

  for how to and what questions within certain time parameters. I mean, if you're spending all day on anything, it's going to be a problem. If you're spending all day watching television, it's going to be a problem. But if you're using it as tool and for how to and what questions, okay. Now, I'll tell you more about how to and what in a second. But when we're using it for other purposes, most notably to alleviate boredom or most importantly, to alleviate loneliness, there's a big problem. There's a new study out of MIT Media Lab, published in 2025, pretty new. This was randomized and, you know, controlled experiments. So he's using human subjects in an experimental setting, like a drug test, to see what would actually happen when people interact more with chatbots in, from different dispositions,

• 6:38Arthur Brooks?

  from different issues in their own lives, different kinds of people. This is a study that looked at 981 people and over 300,000 messages, conversations with, with different chatbots, different AIs. And what they found was that some people were fine. Some people were fine with it. That's when they were asking how to and what questions. People were well adjusted. People were using it as a tool. No problem for their happiness. However, here's the however part that, you know, bears on the question at hand. Lonely people who used AI more to try to alleviate their loneliness, they got lonelier with the excessive hours that they spent on the apps. They also became more antisocial. In other words, they got lonelier

• 7:22Arthur Brooks?

  and they were less likely to alleviate their loneliness, the only way that it could be alleviated, which is to say by being around actual human beings, which meant that they went into a vicious cycle. That's a big problem. Lonely people turn to AIs as conversation partners as if they were actual human beings to alleviate the sense of loneliness. But what that does, it might fool you in the short term, but what this, what these data suggest is that they make you less social and they exacerbate your loneliness in the long run. And this brings you down even more. Now, there's nothing weird about that. There are all kinds of things that we do that'll actually get us into a vicious cycle. When people are really anxious, they'll tend to drink alcohol, for example. One of the greatest predictors of alcohol abuse

• 8:05Arthur Brooks?

  is being an anxious person, which is one of the reasons that high income, high pressure job people, they tend to be more prone to alcoholism. Many people don't know that, but it's true. The trouble with that is that's a vicious cycle as well. When you're trying to alleviate your anxiety with alcohol, what happens is you turn off the cognizance of your anxiety temporarily, but it comes back in a rebound with really a vengeance. And you get more anxious and you drink more alcohol and down and down and down she goes. We have another one of these doom loops with chatbots for people who are lonely and seeking to alleviate their loneliness with the large language model is what we see. Junk food works more or less the same way. And you can actually say that large language models with social interaction

• 8:49Arthur Brooks?

  are the junk food of our social lives. If you're really hungry and you're driving home late at night and you pass a fast food place, you'd be like, man, I just, I just gotta, I gotta eat something. You'll notice, however, that you'll get, you'll gorge on a lot of calories, but get hungry relatively quickly afterward because you don't actually meet your nutrient needs. And you could literally become obese and malnourished simultaneously if this is how you eat every single day. It's a vicious cycle. You can be consuming more and more of the empty calories of the large language model, social calories, and become lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. That's what the study suggests. Now, why? The reason for this is, and we know this from the research on hemispheric lateralization, is, and again, this is a strong theory that comes from the work of Ian McGilchrist

• 9:33Arthur Brooks?

  on, on the idea that the brain has two hemispheres, is that the how to and what parts of life, the technology that dominates our life is largely a left brain hemispheric phenomenon. What we need when it comes to love and relationships is right hemispheric mystery and meaning. And what we're trying to do is to meet our right hemispheric needs with our left hemispheric technology. And it fools us temporarily, but it doesn't actually work. And our brain knows, which is why it comes back with greater loneliness in the end. Now, let's talk about how to solve this, but let's first talk about how to understand this more deeply. Because believe it or not, this is not a new problem.

• 10:15Arthur Brooks?

  This is a category of phenomenon that's known in the psychological literature as parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships are relationships between you and somebody you don't actually know, but that you feel like you know and who doesn't know you. Okay, that's chatbot, right? I mean, you feel like you know the chatbot. You don't actually know the chatbot. And the chatbot certainly doesn't know you, but it's simulating a relationship, which makes it not a social relationship, but a parasocial relationship. And there's nothing new about that. There's nothing new about that under the sun, as a matter of fact. It's just gotten more and more intense with the advent of new technologies that present entities and people to us

• 10:58Arthur Brooks?

  in ways where they can be present virtually, even though they're not present in real life. This parasocial set of relationships in people's lives can, can, can range from kind of a harmless interest and affection in a celebrity to a full blown fictional love and something actually dangerous, which is what social scientists call fictophilia, in which people can literally fall in love with a, I don't know, a character in a book or, or an actor on social media or a chatbot.

• 11:28Arthur Brooks?

  That actually happens, and that's really dangerous. The concept of parasocial relationships was coined in the 1950s by social scientist Donald Horton and R. Richard Wool in a canonical paper in psychiatry, in this journal psychiatry called Mass Communication and Parasocial Interaction: Observations on Intimacy at a Distance. And they kind of, they wrote about it because this was the advent of television, everybody having television and characters becoming really ubiquitous. Recently, I've been thinking about this. When I'm taping this, this episode, two weeks ago, I was in St. Louis because I was there for the, for the beatification of Fulton Sheen, you know, staying on the Catholic stuff, because I just talked about the Pope.

• 12:11Arthur Brooks?

  Fulton Sheen was a, was a Catholic bishop and televangelist from the late 1950s and 1960s. He had a really, really popular television show called Life is Worth Living. And pretty much every Catholic family in America was watching it in the 50s and 60s, before my time, but I talked to old people all the time. It's like, oh yeah, no, we were with him, you know, and he was on ABC and, and he was, and you know, people would watch Fulton Sheen and people literally felt like they knew Fulton Sheen. They knew him, he was like a person to them. He came into their home, they felt warmth toward him. And, and I was there for his beatification, which means it's sort of a step towards sainthood in the Catholic Church. It's a technical thing if you're not Catholic. And, and they had a conference about the work of Fulton Sheen,

• 12:54Arthur Brooks?

  and I've studied him a little bit, and so I gave a keynote presentation. And I talked to some really, people who are much older than I am, or 20 and 30 years older than I am today, so they're pretty old. And they're like, yeah, and we knew him, we knew him. They had a parasocial relationship with him, which is why these two social scientists were writing about this in this early television age, when these celebrities, including even a Catholic bishop, were known personally to people. It was more like movie stars and, you know, television heroes were coming into people's lives. And they were seeing these weird phenomena where people would develop an intimate sense of relationship with actors who were appearing virtually in their homes. Well, of course, the definition got much broader as the technology spread.

• 13:36Arthur Brooks?

  I mean, sure, we still have television and actors and movies and that kind of thing. And by the way, there's nothing new about this. After all, if you go back to the 18th century, there were characters out of novels. You know, the, the cheap novels that people were reading, that people would just really relate to those particular characters. There was a character in a very popular novel from the 18th century named Werther, poor Werther, who was a character who wore a blue waistcoat and yellow pants and was jilted by his lover. And, you know, young romantic men were dressing like poor Werther and being hopeless for, hopeless for romantics. That was a parasocial relationship that people had. It just has gotten more and more and more intense, especially as we've been able to see people on the screen.

• 14:16Arthur Brooks?

  And that's gotten even more intense today as technology has actually brought those people to us. And those people are real, live people showing us things about their ordinary lives, AKA celebrities on social media. I mean, these social scientists, Horton and Wool, they had no idea what was coming, man, let alone the advent of the chatbot. But if you, you know, you see all the time celebrities, you can get an insight into what they're doing in their personal lives constantly. They will actually sell their personal lives to people and, and they, they monetize it in particular ways, or they create value with it in particular ways. Celebrities will share their lives on social media to create an opportunity for them to, I don't know, create a better following by having intimacy with people.

• 15:01Arthur Brooks?

  They, they're, they're cultivating a parasocial relationship with people, saying, I know you, I care about you. And, and young people and old people too are like, that person knows me and cares about me. That's how the parasocial relationship tends to evolve. Why? Well, you know, they crave the love of strangers. And so this actually feeds some interior need. But also, it can be really commercial, because the more that there are parasocial relationships established, the more that the, the commercial relationship, the popularity of the star can be propagated. And so parasocial relationships have really, really expanded even before chatbots. And now, of course, into the world of virtual people, virtual entities. It's exploded that much more. Somebody who is dedicating the responses to you personally,

• 15:46Arthur Brooks?

  somebody who's not real, who doesn't exist as a real person does exist, a robot for all intents and purposes, but who's learning about you and who's tailoring their responses to your needs. This cultivates this very intense kind of parasocial bonding that nothing in the past could have possibly done, even social media with real people, I dare say, and that's what the data are suggesting as well. Now, loneliness and parasocial interaction, as I mentioned before, are not consistently correlated, they're not necessarily correlated. The problem is when lonely people are trying to alleviate their loneliness with parasocial relationships. That's when the problem really starts. A lot of people, it's just, it's pretty silly and insignificant.

• 16:28Arthur Brooks?

  You know, it can be a parasocial relationship, can be gossip about the private life of a celebrity. You know, watercooler gossip about what some famous actress or what some politician is actually doing. That's a parasocial relationship. And that's, it may be trivial, it might be silly, it might be dumb, but it's certainly not threatening in its own way. But there can be cases where it can escalate, in the case of somebody who kind of loses touch with reality. And we have heard cases of where a fan will stalk a star under the delusion that they have a real life connection. People have more of a tendency toward these, toward psychiatric problems or, you know, delusions. They can turn a parasocial relationship, they can believe that it's a real relationship and it can become a dangerous thing.

• 17:10Arthur Brooks?

  But that's certainly not the case at the surface level for most people. However, there is one caution I want to give about all parasocial relationships, which actually comes from the, the attachment literature. There's been a lot written about attachment styles. And, and you've all seen this, I mean, I've talked about it before. There's two attachment pathologies with your parents, with your spouse, with your friends. And those two pathology, pathologies are anxiety and avoidance, right? Those are attachment styles that are really problematic, that if you have an anxious attachment style, that means you're really afraid that a relationship is going to dissolve. If you have an avoidant attachment style, you're holding people at arms length. And those are pathologies that make it hard for you to have normal relationships.

• 17:52Arthur Brooks?

  Okay, now, by the way, if you're interested in your romantic attachment style, I have a test that you can actually take on my website for free, arthurbrooks.com/attachmentstyle. And it'll actually take you to one that's very scientifically validated. I didn't write it. I actually got permission from, from others to put it on my website because people find it really interesting. And there's a good article that you can read on attachment styles for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. This actually is from 1998. It's the original article on this, and it's still really good. Adult Attachment Styles: Their Relations to Family Context and Personality. I, I like to look at it in the context of romantic relationships because that's something I'm writing about and working on a book called Falling in Love and Staying in Love. Stay tuned for that, stay tuned for the next couple of years for that.

• 18:36Arthur Brooks?

  Haven't actually started it, but it's all up here, folks. And, okay, so these are problems. Now, there's no relationship that I've been able to see between anxious attachment in your real life and parasocial relationships. But there is with avoidant attachment. So people who have avoidant attachment, they tend to hold people at arms length because of, you know, whatever reason. You know, you just don't get close to people. People who have an avoidant attachment style, therefore, they struggle with any intimacy with, with partners, with family members. These are the people who are more likely to have parasocial relationships, especially with characters who are avoidant in their own style as well. It's really interesting. So there's been some good studies on this.

• 19:19Arthur Brooks?

  One study in the Journal of Social and Personality and Personal Relationships called Adult Attachment and Engagement with Fictitional Characters. It actually shows, is over two, in 2002, two psychologists, they're at York University in Canada. They found that forming parasocial bonds strongly related to avoidant attachment. They would push real people away from themselves and form parasocial bonds with people who weren't close to them because they're safer. That's what they found. Okay, so why do I send up the alarm on this? Because if you're forming a lot of parasocial relationships, you're spending a lot of time thinking about the lives of people you don't actually know. It may be substituting for the relationships you actually need, and you might be lonely as a result of that.

• 20:00Arthur Brooks?

  That might be a predictor of you actually forming up intimate bond with a chatbot, as a matter of fact, which is the reason that we're going to need to get to the suggestions portion of the podcast today and what to do about it. Not quite there yet, but we will. There's kind of a vicious cycle that actually people get in of, with chatbots of, you know, avoidant attachment cycle, and so forming a bond with somebody who's not real. And then, which actually makes you less social and makes you more avoidant. At the same time, you're actually getting lonelier. And once again, that's the doom loop that we're talking about here. So, so attachment style is really important in understanding this as well. This also, once again, will lead to more anxiety and depression because it compromises our brain, our ability of our brain

• 20:45Arthur Brooks?

  to work the way it's supposed to hemispherically. Remember, when you're using especially large language models as a form of intimacy, as a form of, of interaction, as opposed to actual human, messy human beings that won't tell you everything that you want to hear, what you're doing is you're, you're actually using the right hemisphere of your brain, which you use for intimacy, which you use for in real life relationships. You're not using that in the same way. Your brain is largely relying on the left hemisphere of your brain when you're interacting with chatbots. That's the theory at least, and preliminary evidence suggests that that is indeed the case. More loneliness, more depression, more anxiety, worse life. If you're like me, you gotta be drinking when you're in the gym and you have to be drinking something clean without any calories

• 21:29Arthur Brooks?

  that will actually give you your electrolytes and all the good stuff. For me, that's Element, L-M-N-T. You probably knew that already. It's a great product that helps you stay hydrated without sugar and a bunch of dodgy ingredients that are found in a lot of popular electrolyte drinks and sports drinks. No sugar, no junk, just electrolytes that actually work. Give it a try. I like it. It's science-backed, it's made for athletes, fasting, keto, or happiness scientists like me. Anyone who sweats. So, how do I use it? I use it in the morning, 4:45 in the morning. I don't like to drink anything with caffeine or anything. It peps me up because I like to be real clear and I drink my caffeine later. Element is just the ticket that I need. Give it a try yourself.

• 22:12Arthur Brooks?

  Right now, you can get a free sample pack with any purchase at drink element. That's drink, just like it sounds, L-M-N-T.com/Arthur. Try it risk-free. If you don't like it, they'll refund your order. No questions asked, but you're gonna like it. We spend a lot of time on this show on the big questions. Questions of meaning, relationships, the big whys of life. But none of it works very well when you're running on just a few hours of crummy sleep. Here's what the science actually shows. Poor sleep doesn't just make you tired, it can actually make you less happy. You can't build a meaningful life on frequent, chronic, broken sleep. So I take my sleep seriously.

• 22:55Arthur Brooks?

  One of the best investments I've made in this area is my Helix mattress. What I like about Helix is that they recognize something obvious but important. Different people sleep differently. Their website has a short quiz that asks about your sleep position, firmness preferences, and other sleep habits. Then they match you with one of more than 20 mattress models designed around your specific needs. Once that choice is made, the mattress ships directly to your door. It's a simple idea, but it's surprisingly rare. Start with the person, not the product. If you're serious about improving your sleep and your happiness, visit helixsleep.com/brooks for 20% off sitewide and additional offers.

• 23:39Arthur Brooks?

  Invest in your sleep. Everything else works better when you do. But what should you do? You have a relationship with a chatbot that's actually making life a little bit worse? Maybe you didn't know until now that this was a problem? What should you do? Now, let's start with a non-chatbot case, just parasocial relationships in general. One of the things that I recommend to almost everybody is to pay less attention to the personal details of the lives that people you don't know. And so, for example, here's the formula for using Instagram in a way that will make you happier and not unhappier. Yes, I said it, you can actually have social media make you happier, but you have to do it for literally, you have to have three uses for it. Number one, has to be time limited.

• 24:22Arthur Brooks?

  You shouldn't be on social media for more than an hour a day total across all platforms, probably a little bit less. But you should remember the three Ls of how you use social media, which is learning, loving, and laughing. Learning is you're going to learn about things that are really, truly interesting and useful to you. Maybe for your work and maybe just for your own enrichment as a person. Second is loving, and that means you're connecting with people and paying attention to people that you literally know. So not a love relationship is parasocial, because that's not a real love relationship. It's got to be social, not parasocial. And social media should be an adjunct to your actual social life, not your parasocial life. That's number two. And last is laughing, which is using social media, looking at things that actually crack

• 25:06Arthur Brooks?

  you up in very small doses, right? Not scrolling mindlessly hilarious reels on Instagram for hours at a time because you're still time limited, but you know, whatever actually makes you laugh, good, good, as long as it's wholesome and not at somebody else's expense. For some reason, by the way, that algorithm is super smart. If you use it in a parsimonious way like this, that's all it will send you is the three Ls. Learning, stuff it knows you like, loving, people it knows you know, and laughing, stuff it knows you think is funny. And for me, it's all, I don't know why, but it's all raccoons getting into people's garbage. I don't know what it is. I think like their little opposable thumbs are hilarious. I don't know what it is. But the whole point is that's how to use it, and that goes from parasocial to social.

• 25:48Arthur Brooks?

  And you know, it's true that social media can actually enhance your life if you use it within those bonds. This is part of the broader idea that in all parasocial relationships, you should spend less time thinking about the lives of people that you don't know. That's not enriching for you. You feel closer to people when they give you the intimate details. And once again, there's an incentive for a lot of famous people today to try to suck you into the personal details of their life and to form a parasocial bond with you. But that's in their interest. It's not in your interest in any meaningful way. So I would recommend having a little bit of modesty and discretion in a way that you wouldn't think it's decent to be paying attention to people's personal lives when you're not invited, actually invited.

• 26:33Arthur Brooks?

  If you don't know somebody, their personal life is kind of their business, whether or not they're trying to share it with you or not. It's better for you that it remains their business. Think about that a little bit and think about, practically speaking, the three Ls of social media use. Now, on to chatbots, but more generally, what happens if parasocial relationships have become an impediment to your happiness? How do you break up? How do you break up with a parasocial bond? When it's taking up too much of your time, too much of your thoughts? Maybe you want to quit consuming a celebrity's personal life or their work? You want to break up with a parasocial friend? Or you want to break up with a chatbot?

• 27:18Arthur Brooks?

  That actually might be harder than it sounds because scholars who've studied parasocial bonds, they've found that they are deep and they're emotional. And you can actually feel a little bit of grief and loss when you break up with it. There's been studies on this where, for example, that television shows will finish or a character in a television show that has a lot of viewers will die and people are just like grief-stricken and bummed out about that. They'll, you know, soap operas, for example, who have done this, but you know, really big shows, series, for example, when they stop, people will feel like a friend has died. It's funny because people who have deep parasocial bonds with television characters, they'll dream about the television characters. They'll dream about having a conversation with the character.

• 28:03Arthur Brooks?

  You know, it's normal because this is the random firing of synapses in your brain and this is what's actually occupying your brain. You dream about a friend, why not dream about somebody with whom you have a parasocial relationship? But then when you break that, and that can be hard on people, and it's the same thing if you actually turn off the chatbot who actually appears to know you, even though you know the chatbot doesn't know you, it's going to stimulate the same parts of your brain that are active when you're having a rupture relationship that's real in real life. If you're interested in that, there's a part of your brain in the limbic system called the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, you probably heard me talk about it before. That's what's implicated in sadness. You flick that thing, it feels like there's a social loss, you lost someone or something

• 28:48Arthur Brooks?

  that you love, either real or parasocial. But here's where the research gets really, really interesting. The grief that you might feel, the loss, the withdrawal, even that you actually feel because of your brain, remember your psychology is your biology, it's not long lasting and it's not very severe. So that's interesting, isn't it? The data show that in most cases, probably your case, that when people have parasocial ruptures, that you can feel grief and loss, but it doesn't last very long. I've actually seen, when I've talked to people about this, that it tends to be really fast. For example, when people stop using a chatbot for something that's social to have a, you

• 29:31Arthur Brooks?

  know, get advice, get therapy, get, you know, a relationship, but a fake friendship, there's less than two weeks that it starts to wear off, that neurochemically, we're actually not having the same reaction really quickly. I'll put in a couple of pieces in here. There's a pretty nice piece in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media called "When Good Friends Say Goodbye: A Parasocial Breakup," that actually shows that you get over this really fast. So rip the Band-Aid off is the bottom line, because the data say you're actually going to be okay. That's the best way to do it. Okay, third, there's one more issue to deal with, which is that if you have a lot of parasocial relationships with a chatbot or, you know, with a celebrity or any character that exists

• 30:15Arthur Brooks?

  or even doesn't exist in real life, even if it's pretty innocent, there's a good chance that there's an avoidant attachment problem lurking behind there that you might want to be paying attention to. And, you know, changing your attachment style is a little more complex than unfollowing a celebrity or turning off ChatGPT or erasing a whole conversation you've been having for a year or two. But your attachment style might be behind that behavior in the first place. You might want to learn more about it. And so if you do, do read some of the research that I'm putting in the show notes about that. And the great thing about it is that people who have avoidant attachment, they can absolutely fix that. And one thing you might find is that when you're holding people less at arm's length, when you're less avoidant of other people's love and getting close to people, when you

• 30:59Arthur Brooks?

  fix that in your life, either by yourself or with the help of friends or even with the help of mental health professionals, that you're going to want parasocial relationships a lot less. And that's a pretty good thing. Just knowing your attachment style can be extremely helpful and productive. By the way, if you want me to go more into attachment styles, I think about this a lot and I teach this a lot. So do let me know in the comments below and maybe I'll do a whole episode on anxious and avoidant attachment in family life and most especially in romantic life. In the meantime, do pay attention to your parasocial bonds, especially in the age of the chatbot. I don't see a whole lot of good coming from people trying to solve the right-hand side needs of their gloriously beautifully made brains, using the tools of the left-hand

• 31:44Arthur Brooks?

  side for which they were not made. They're inadequate to the purpose. You need what you need and your brain and your heart know what that is, which is in real life, love with real people. Take some questions. Jim C.

• 32:01Arthur Brooks?

  Writes into Office Hours at ortho books.com. I have a question on anhedonia. Let me define that. Anhedonia is a word that means the inability to feel pleasure or enjoyment. I have a question on anhedonia. What can people who suffer from it do to feel good emotions again, by which I'm sure Jim is talking about enjoying things that he used to enjoy. I can feel all the bad emotions, but the good ones, the enjoyment, the pleasure are nearly impossible to experience. Okay, three cases here to look at. And I don't know what the case is because we're not sitting here together, Jim. Case number one, I would be digging into whether or not there is an escalation of addictive behavior going on. Why? Because one of the things we know from the work of Anilemki at Stanford is that

• 32:46Arthur Brooks?

  when people are actually trying to get more and more and more pleasure from addictive behaviors and substances, chemicals, behaviors, whatever, they get less and less and less pleasure back because of the way that we actually become unable to feel the effects of the dopamine in our brains. You know, our brains are marvelous learning organs. And when you used to tweak your brain with little dopamine saying, that's a reward. Isn't that wonderful? Doesn't very quickly, which is why addiction and escalation happen. And the more that you chase dopamine, the less you're actually going to get. That's the excellent clinical work of Anilemki. And so that's the first thing I'd want to look at, or you're experiencing anhedonia because of chasing behavior,

• 33:30Arthur Brooks?

  chemically or behaviorally. Okay, let's say that's not the case. The next thing I'd want to look at is whether or not there's a clinical reason, you know, chemically, that you're, you're finding it really difficult to experience dopamine way below an ordinary level. And that would be the anhedonia that's associated often with clinical depression. In that case, I'd want to talk to a doctor, and there are actual pharmaceutical remedies to that. So for example, serotonin, norepinephrine reuptic inhibitors will indirectly affect dopamine in the human brain and will relieve some amount of, of anhedonia. Talk to your doctor about that. Maybe that's the case. If you've, if you're experiencing clinical depression, that might be, that might conceivably be helpful to you. And it's actually, this is not medical advice. Go get your

• 34:15Arthur Brooks?

  medical advice from your doctor, because that's one of the things that in literature has shown to help some people. The third case, and this is something I bet might actually ring the bell for you, Jim. You might be bored, you know, anhedonia comes because you're actually bored. You know, the stuff that used to light you up doesn't light you up anymore. And that's really normal. I find that around age 43, how old are you, Jim? I don't know. You don't say, what used to light you up doesn't professionally anymore. And boredom is related to anhedonia all day long. Maybe you need to change a pace. Maybe you need to move. Maybe it's time for you to start thinking about a new career. Maybe it's time to go back to school. Maybe it's time to reignite the

• 34:58Arthur Brooks?

  flame in your, in your marriage. I'm not saying move on from your marriage because that's never advice that I give, or I rarely give that. But the whole point is the change of pace might be just what you need to feed your anhedonia. So what's the, I know the circumstances that can actually fix that. But those are three circumstances that are different, one of which might be applicable to your case, Jim. David S. writes into the website, as a high school student. Good for you, David. I'm glad to see we've got high school students watching Office Hours. There's a lot of stress with college, doing extracurriculars, getting good grades. Ah, Striver, David's a Striver. Love to see it. I was curious about how do I prepare for the future while still enjoying the present? Yeah, I know it. And you know, here's the Striver's lament. Satisfaction is abundant because satisfaction is the joy of an

• 35:43Arthur Brooks?

  accomplishment with struggle. It's so good, the purpose that actually goes into this. But what it does is it can be actually set up against another macronutrient of happiness, which is enjoyment. All satisfaction, no enjoyment. You're looking for balance. You know, you need lots of carbohydrates, but you need lots of protein, too. And if you're getting all carbohydrates and no protein, you're not going to like what actually happens to your health and to your body. And this is what a lot of young Striver actually do, and also take it from me, a lot of old Strivers like me. Lots of satisfaction, not enough enjoyment is what it comes into it. And so what do you need to do? You need to schedule more enjoyment. You need to actually take leisure more seriously. I'm going to put in the show notes, a whole podcast on leisure that I've done, how to have more fun in your life. But David, the first thing I want you to do

• 36:28Arthur Brooks?

  is to look at that and take that as seriously. You know, you have to do fun, goofy stuff, eight hours a day, but you do need to do it some of the day. Treat it like you do anything else, and you'll like the result. Felipe asks kind of the same question, as a matter of fact. Felipe B. writes in at Office Hours, can a person spend decades training their mind for control and risk management and doing so unintentionally train themselves away from happiness? Yep, that's what David is doing, actually, unintentionally, which is getting more and more and more satisfaction through the deferral of gratification and future rewards and ambition and striving and not getting enough enjoyment in his life. And that's certainly the case, probably for you as

• 37:10Arthur Brooks?

  well, Felipe. So I had two questions, kind of on the same, in the same vein. Hope that's useful. I hope all of this is useful. In the meantime, remember, real life is where you get real love. You're not going to get it from a chat bot or from any parasocial relationship. This might be the week that you need to break up and actually get together with the people who truly can and do love you. Let me know your thoughts at [email protected]. Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple. Leave a comment. I promise I'll read it. We always do. We love to hear it. And if you have negative thoughts, that's okay, too. We want to know what you think. We want to know your suggestions. As always, tell us what you want to know more of. We're more than a year in. We do episodes every week, and we can't wait to hear what's on your mind and

• 37:55Arthur Brooks?

  give you what you're talking about. Remember, this show on chatbots today and parasocial relationships was in response to a lot of questions that I've gotten. Follow me on Instagram and LinkedIn, all the other platforms, and do order The Meaning of Your Life, which is my latest book, if you haven't already. New books to come, but that's the one that's still kind of on the market right now. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you share these ideas with other people. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you soon.

• 38:27Speaker 02

  Say hello to smooth, sugar-like sweetness with Truvia Alulose Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener. This blend delivers balanced sweetness that minimizes aftertaste with zero calories per serving. Designed to fit everyday moments, Truvia Alulose Blend measures cup for cup like sugar, making it effortless to swap into beverages, baking, and even savory dishes. Find Truvia Alulose Plus Stevia Sweetener and Monk Fruit Sweetener online and nationwide at Kroger, Target, and your favorite local grocery retailer.