Does My LLM Have Emotions Yet?

September 15, 2026 Claims that large language models experience depression, anxiety, or other emotional states continue to surface, alongside reports of "AI psychosis" in users who form intense attachments to chatbots. But what can we understand of these phenomena based on the science of emotion? This talk reviews what neuroscience, social psychology, and developmental psychology have established about how emotions function in biological creatures. I distinguish related but distinct constructs like emotional intelligence, empathy, and emotional contagion, and contrast deep and shallow affect t