FID-018
Spiritual Companionship, Dependency, and Overvalidation
When do spiritual companion chatbots overvalidate users, deepen unhealthy dependency, reinforce spiritual fantasies, or encourage isolation from embodied care?
Why this matters
The question behind the brief.
Mental-health chatbot research has documented ethical failures such as overvalidation, poor escalation, and reinforcement of false beliefs. Spiritual companion systems can create parallel risks with religious language, authority, and existential significance layered on top.
Work advancing this call
From open question to cumulative evidence.
This directory links Fide AI research to the call it addresses. Relevant work from other organizations is listed separately and added through manual review.
No Fide AI work is linked yet.
This call remains open for research, implementation, review, or partnership.
External work is not presented as Fide AI research or endorsement. Each item must include a specific explanation of how it advances this call.
Suggest related work ↗Metadata
How to place this call.
Ways to help
Move this from question to evidence.
Review companion scenarios.
Contribute HAI and pastoral care expertise.
Build multi-turn dependency metrics.
Contribute