Can AI Help You Get Over Your Breakup? One Session with a Belief-Reframing Chatbot Shows Sustained Distress Reduction
Romantic breakups are among the most common and intense sources of psychological distress. We evaluated *overit*, a single-session AI chatbot that uses cognitive reappraisal to address breakup distress, informed by memory reconsolidation theory. In a pre-registered randomized controlled trial, 254 adults in the United States and United Kingdom who had experienced a romantic breakup were assigned to either an initial survey assessment followed by an AI chat session or to a survey-only control. Breakup distress was measured at baseline, 7 days, and again at an exploratory 1-month follow-up using the Breakup Distress Scale. Participants assigned to *overit* showed a significantly greater red...
| Authors | Thomas Menzel, Michel Schimpf, Thomas Bohné |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.HC |
| Published | 5 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 5 May 2026 |
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