Curse or Cure: Exploring Responses to Mental Health Related Posts in Reddit and ChatGPT Using Terror Management Theory

Abstract

In our paper, we investigate the responses that individuals with mental illnesses receive on their posts on Reddit and ChatGPT. Using terror management theory (TMT), we propose that the level of empathy of the comments is a function of the mortality salience of the commenter and the technical platform. To test our proposed effects empirically, we extracted a sample of posts and their comments from the “mental illness” and “mental health” subreddits along with responses generated from those posts on ChatGPT. In our statistical analyses, we found a significant main effect for mortality salience in relation to empathy consistent with the TMT, but this effect was qualified by the technical platform. We found that higher mortality salience favored ChatGPT over Reddit and lower mortality salience had the opposite effect.