{"id":190236,"date":"2026-02-24T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/psychology-graduate-student-explores-how-ai-perceives-human-distress\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T12:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T17:15:09","slug":"psychology-graduate-student-explores-how-ai-perceives-human-distress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/24\/psychology-graduate-student-explores-how-ai-perceives-human-distress\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychology Graduate Student Explores How AI Perceives Human Distress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.fullerton.edu\/spotlight\/psychology-graduate-student-explores-how-ai-perceives-human-distress\/\">Psychology Graduate Student Explores How AI Perceives Human Distress<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.fullerton.edu\/spotlight\/psychology-graduate-student-explores-how-ai-perceives-human-distress\/\">https:\/\/news.fullerton.edu\/spotlight\/psychology-graduate-student-explores-how-ai-perceives-human-distress\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-02-24 12:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"news.fullerton.edu\">news.fullerton.edu<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>AI\u2019s Misestimation of Emotional Distress:<\/strong> Psychology graduate student Hannah Cliburn and her professor David Gerkens conducted a study on how AI evaluates emotional distress in autobiographical memories. They found that AI consistently rated emotional memories as more distressing than human respondents.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Inconsistent Criteria:<\/strong> The research discovered that the language models used often provided differing criteria every time they rated the same emotional memory, highlighting the ambiguous nature of AI&#8217;s emotional evaluations.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Potential Overestimation Risks:<\/strong> Cliburn expressed concerns about AI overestimating emotional distress, particularly worrying about its implications for mental health support if distressed individuals might turn to AI-driven chatbots instead of human professionals.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Impact of Mentorship:<\/strong> Both Cliburn and Gerkens emphasize the importance of mentorship in fostering rigorous research. The project was supported by a graduate student research initiative, allowing for focused and sustained collaboration.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Critical Thinking and Human Judgment:<\/strong> Cliburn stressed the need for critical thinking and human judgment, asserting that AI should supplement rather than replace human interactions, particularly in sensitive areas like mental health.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Psychology Graduate Student Explores How AI Perceives Human Distress https:\/\/news.fullerton.edu\/spotlight\/psychology-graduate-student-explores-how-ai-perceives-human-distress\/ Publish Date: 2026-02-24 12:00:00 Source&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":190237,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/news.fullerton.edu\/app\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Cliburn-Gerkens-Summer-Research-Symposium-2025.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190236"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190238,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190236\/revisions\/190238"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}