The Psychology of the Eliza Effect: Anthropomorphism, Social Presence, and Projection in Human-AI Interaction

Shruti Sachin Karlekar

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.60365

The Psychology of the Eliza Effect: Anthropomorphism, Social Presence, and Projection in Human-AI Interaction

Author(s)	Ms. Shruti Sachin Karlekar
Country	India
Abstract	The ‘Eliza Effect’, first observed by Joseph Weizenbaum (1966), is the human tendency to project human qualities like emotions, understanding, and intentionality onto artificial conversational agents, and talks about how readily people confide in a machine (in Weizenbaum’s study- a chatbot posing as a psychotherapist) that merely rephrases user inputs, believing it really understood them. Now, sixty years later, the same phenomenon has resurfaced. Generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, CoPilot, etc.) have become a global trend, largely due to their conversational, user-friendly, and interactive interfaces. These Chatbots and AI assistants now interact in such a way that sounds empathetic, attentive, and flawlessly human, which makes many people connect with them instantly. Leveraging this tendency, many AI startups have also brought to market “AI-companions” for people to rely on them emotionally in times of distress, amplifying this phenomenon further. Hence, understanding the psychological basis underlying this layer of human-AI interaction is important. This paper takes a review-based conceptual approach to explore psychological theories on anthropomorphism, parasocial interaction, and social presence and attempts to propose them as factors influencing the Eliza Effect and the illusion of social connection with AI systems, thus seeing the Eliza Effect not as a mere buzzword but a construct with psychological valence that is of much importance in today’s world. The discussion also considers both sides of this phenomenon: how this effect can increase engagement and emotional support, and also create over-trust, dependence, and misplaced empathy, and emphasize the need for awareness of illusions of reciprocal engagement that misleads users.
Keywords	Eliza Effect, Anthropomophism, Human-AI Interaction, Social Presence, Projection, Illusion of Empathy
Field	Sociology > Philosophy / Psychology / Religion
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-11-13
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.60365

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The Psychology of the Eliza Effect: Anthropomorphism, Social Presence, and Projection in Human-AI Interaction

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