Exploring Affective Representations in Emotional Narratives: An Exploratory Study Comparing ChatGPT and Human Responses

While artificial Intelligence (AI) has made significant advancements, the seeming absence of its emotional ability has hindered effective communication with humans. This study explores how ChatGPT (ChatGPT-3.5 Mar 23, 2023 Version) represents affective responses to emotional narratives and compare these responses to human responses. Thirty-four participants read affect-eliciting short stories and rated their emotional responses and 10 recorded ChatGPT sessions generated responses to the stories. Classification analyses revealed the successful identification of affective categories of stories, valence, and arousal within and across sessions for ChatGPT. Classification analyses revealed the successful identification of affective categories of stories, valence, and arousal within and across sessions for ChatGPT. Classification accuracies predicting affective categories of stories, valence, and arousal of humans based on the affective ratings of ChatGPT and vice versa were not significant, indicating differences in the way the affective states were represented., indicating differences in the way the affective states were represented. These findings suggested that ChatGPT can distinguish emotional states and generate affective responses consistently, but there are differences in how the affective states are represented between ChatGPT and humans. Understanding these mechanisms is crucial for improving emotional interactions with AI.