Dialogue Systems for Emotional Support via Value Reinforcement

Juhee Kim, Chunghu Mok, Jisun Lee, Hyang Sook Kim, Yohan Jo


Abstract
Emotional support dialogue systems aim to reduce help-seekers’ distress and help them overcome challenges. While human values—core beliefs that shape an individual’s priorities—are increasingly emphasized in contemporary psychological therapy for their role in fostering internal transformation and long-term emotional well-being, their integration into emotional support systems remains underexplored. To bridge this gap, we present a value-driven method for training emotional support dialogue systems designed to reinforce positive values in seekers. Notably, our model identifies which values to reinforce at each turn and how to do so, by leveraging online support conversations from Reddit. We evaluate the method across support skills, seekers’ emotional intensity, and value reinforcement. Our method consistently outperforms various baselines, effectively exploring and eliciting values from seekers. Additionally, leveraging crowd knowledge from Reddit significantly enhances its effectiveness. Therapists highlighted its ability to validate seekers’ challenges and emphasize positive aspects of their situations—both crucial elements of value reinforcement. Our work, being the first to integrate value reinforcement into emotional support systems, demonstrates its promise and establishes a foundation for future research.
Anthology ID:
2025.acl-long.1395
Volume:
Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
Month:
July
Year:
2025
Address:
Vienna, Austria
Editors:
Wanxiang Che, Joyce Nabende, Ekaterina Shutova, Mohammad Taher Pilehvar
Venue:
ACL
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
28733–28766
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingestion-acl-25/2025.acl-long.1395/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Juhee Kim, Chunghu Mok, Jisun Lee, Hyang Sook Kim, and Yohan Jo. 2025. Dialogue Systems for Emotional Support via Value Reinforcement. In Proceedings of the 63rd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 28733–28766, Vienna, Austria. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Dialogue Systems for Emotional Support via Value Reinforcement (Kim et al., ACL 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingestion-acl-25/2025.acl-long.1395.pdf