Self-Expansion Through AI: Latent Profile Analysis of AI Companionship and Wellbeing Outcomes

Ali Sahandi; Jaime Banks

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arXiv · 2611.00436

Self-Expansion Through AI: Latent Profile Analysis of AI Companionship and Wellbeing Outcomes

Ali Sahandi·Jaime Banks

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Abstract

People increasingly form meaningful relationships with conversational AI. Current variable-centered literature offers a mixed picture of relational patterns and how they associate with wellbeing. Taking a person-centered approach, we applied latent profile analysis to secondary data from 467 active conversational AI users, evaluating five indicators of machine companionship: utilitarian motivation, eudaimonic exchange, connective coordination, mind perception, and inclusion of other in the self. Five profiles emerged, ordering parsimoniously from objectified-utilitarian to intimate-bonded. Conceptually divergent utilitarian motivation and companionate engagement co-occurred, rather than diverging. Furthermore, deep companionship was achieved without users attributing a mind to the AI. Profile membership was strongly associated with relatedness need satisfaction, tracking upward across the groups, but was only weakly associated with loneliness, indicating AI fulfills immediate relational needs but may not resolve systemic human disconnection. Ultimately, these findings characterize human-AI relationships as graded configurations spanning a superordinate continuum of self-expansion

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Ali Sahandi, Jaime Banks. 2026-10-30. Self-Expansion Through AI: Latent Profile Analysis of AI Companionship and Wellbeing Outcomes. https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.00436

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