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

Eileen Wemmer and Carsten Röcker, in a paper presented at the First Workshop on Integrating NLP and Psychology to Study Social Interactions (NLPSI) @ICWSM '25 in Copenhagen, Denmark, argue that Self-Determination Theory offers a promising framework for extracting antecedents of human well-being from text, and they outline ten challenges for developing need-aware, AI-augmented communication. The paper, published by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) on pages 82–89, highlights the limited work in NLP leveraging basic psychological needs (BPNs) for autonomy, competence, and relatedness, and proposes AI-mediated communication as a target domain for large language model development.

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 /people/aswathy-velutharambath/unverified/ , Sofie Labat /people/sofie-labat/ , Neele Falk /people/neele-falk/ , Flor Miriam Plaza-del-Arco /people/flor-miriam-plaza-del-arco/ , Roman Klinger /people/roman-klinger/ , Véronique Hoste /people/veronique-hoste/unverified/ - 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 https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.8/ . In Proceedings 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 https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.8/ Wemmer & Röcker, NLPSI 2025 - PDF: https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.8.pdf https://aclanthology.org/2025.nlpsi-1.8.pdf