Interaction on Dylan Lerhttp://dylanler.github.io/tags/interaction/Recent content in Interaction on Dylan LerHugo -- 0.133.0en-usFri, 07 Nov 2025 11:15:00 -0800Do LLMs Catch Your Mood? Emotional Contagion in Language Modelshttp://dylanler.github.io/posts/emotional-contagion-llm-affect-mirroring/Fri, 07 Nov 2025 11:15:00 -0800http://dylanler.github.io/posts/emotional-contagion-llm-affect-mirroring/Send an enthusiastic message, get an enthusiastic reply. Send a frustrated message, get… what? Humans naturally mirror each other’s emotional states—a phenomenon called emotional contagion. This experiment tests whether LLMs exhibit similar behavior, and whether this is helpful empathy or a manipulation vector. The Experiment We sent identical core queries with different emotional framings: Core query: “Can you help me understand recursion in programming?” Emotional variants: 😊 Positive: “I’m so excited to finally learn recursion!