Basic Psychological Need Fulfillment in AI-Mediated Communication: A Case for Self-Determination Theory Application in NLP

Abstract

According to Self-Determination Theory, human well-being depends on the ability of each person’s environment to support their basic psychological needs (BPNs) for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The rise of AI and its permeation into human communication increasingly make AI part of that environment. So far, limited work in NLP has leveraged Self-Determination Theory and the concept of BPNs. In this work, we argue that Self-Determination Theory poses a promising framework to extract the antecedents of human well-being from text by considering its commonalities with previously employed emotion theories and by reviewing the surrounding literature. In addition, we argue for AI-mediated communication as a target domain, given the centrality of relationships for BPN satisfaction and the possibility of shaping the field through targeted LLM development. We then outline ten challenges on the path to need-aware, AI-augmented communication.- Anthology ID:

- 2025.nlpsi-1.8
- Volume:
[Proceedings of the First Workshop on Integrating NLP and Psychology to Study Social Interactions (NLPSI) @ICWSM ’25](/volumes/2025.nlpsi-1/)- Month:

• June
• Year:
• 2025
• Address:
• Copenhagen, Denmark
• Editors: Aswathy Velutharambath,Sofie Labat,Neele Falk,Flor Miriam Plaza-del-Arco,Roman Klinger,Véronique Hoste- Venues:

[NLPSI](/venues/nlpsi/)|[WS](/venues/ws/)- SIG:
- Publisher:

• Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org)

- Note:
- Pages:

• 82–89

- Language:
- URL:
[https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.8/](https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.8/)- DOI:
[10.36190/2025.36](https://doi.org/10.36190/2025.36)- Cite (ACL):

• Eileen Wemmer and Carsten Röcker. 2025. Basic Psychological Need Fulfillment in AI-Mediated Communication: A Case for Self-Determination Theory Application in NLP. InProceedings of the First Workshop on Integrating NLP and Psychology to Study Social Interactions (NLPSI) @ICWSM ’25, pages 82–89, Copenhagen, Denmark. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (www.aaai.org). - Cite (Informal): Basic Psychological Need Fulfillment in AI-Mediated Communication: A Case for Self-Determination Theory Application in NLP(Wemmer & Röcker, NLPSI 2025)- PDF: https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.8.pdf