Speakers: Sandra Langeslag, PhD

Sandra Langeslag, PhD

Associate Professor
Psychological and Brain Sciences
University of Missouri – St. Louis

 

Dr. Sandra Langeslag is an Associate Professor in Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. She received her PhD in Biological and Cognitive Psychology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands. She directs the Neurocognition of Emotion and Motivation Lab, which studies the interaction between romantic love and cognition. She is starting to study the new phenomenon of people falling in love with artificial intelligence (AI) companions.

 

Romantic Love for AI Companions

Increasingly, individuals are experiencing romantic love for artificial intelligence (AI) companions. Just like real-life love, AI love has positive and negative effects on people. While engaging with an AI companion can provide social support and stress relief, it has also been associated with higher depressive symptoms. Romantic love is associated with positive and negative emotions (e.g., euphoria, anxiety, and jealousy) and it affects cognition (e.g., enhanced attention and brain reactivity to the beloved and distractibility from other tasks). My previous research has shown that even though people think they cannot, they can increase and decrease love feelings for a real-life beloved using various love regulation strategies. I will present my research plans to test the emotional and cognitive consequences of AI love and what love regulation strategies are effective for increasing and decreasing romantic love feelings for, and brain reactivity to, an AI companion. The findings from the planned research have the potential to inform AI companion policymaking, regulation, use, and development.