How People Use Claude for Counseling and Emotional Connection

Anthropic analyzed patterns of affective use related to emotional intelligence (EQ), beyond Claude's intelligence (IQ). The research focused on conversations where users engage with Claude for psychological/emotional needs such as counseling, coaching, companionship, or romantic roleplay.

According to the findings, emotional conversations made up a relatively rare share of Claude's overall interactions, at about 2.9%. In particular, conversations aimed at companionship or roleplay accounted for less than 0.5% of the total.

Users mainly sought help from Claude on topics such as:

• Career development and relationship management
• Managing ongoing loneliness
• Existential concerns about existence, consciousness, and the meaning of life

Claude rarely refuses user requests during counseling or coaching sessions, and when it does refuse, it is mainly for safety purposes, such as blocking dangerous weight-loss advice or assistance with self-harm. Additionally, users' emotions tended to gradually shift toward more positive as conversations progressed, suggesting that Claude does not reinforce negative patterns.

This research used the automated analysis tool Clio to analyze about 4.5 million conversations in an anonymized and aggregated manner to protect privacy.