AI RESEARCH
When Seekers Are Hard to Help: Evaluating Emotional Support Dialogue Systems in Worst-Case Interactions
arXiv CS.CL
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ArXi:2605.28228v1 Announce Type: new Emotional Dialogue Systems (ESDSes) are increasingly evaluated and trained with LLM-simulated seekers. However, such simulated seekers often behave as cooperative, average-case users who disclose clearly, respond constructively, and accept within a few turns. This can lead to overly optimistic evaluation and obscure whether ESDSes can handle difficult help-seeking interactions.