arxiv: 2602.04017 · v1 · submitted 2026-02-03 · 💻 cs.HC · cs.CL

Chaplains' Reflections on the Design and Usage of AI for Conversational Care

Joel Wester , Samuel Rhys Cox , Henning Pohl , Niels van Berkel This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-16 07:24 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.HC cs.CL

keywords conversational AIchaplainspastoral careattunementemotional supportchatbot designwell-beingnon-clinical contexts

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The pith

Chaplains reveal AI chatbots fall short in the attunement needed for non-clinical emotional support

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The paper examines how chaplains who guide people through crises, grief, and reflection perceive conversational AI. Eighteen chaplains built their own AI chatbots and reflected on the experience, leading to an analysis of where such systems fall short of pastoral duties. The work identifies four themes—Listening, Connecting, Carrying, and Wanting—that capture both the chaplains' roles and AI limitations. These themes connect to the idea of attunement as a way to understand relational care. The findings matter because most everyday emotional support occurs outside clinical settings, where diagnosis-focused AI approaches may not apply.

Core claim

Chaplains perceive their pastoral care duties and AI chatbots' limitations through the themes of Listening, Connecting, Carrying, and Wanting. These themes resonate with the idea of attunement as a relational lens for understanding the delicate experiences care technologies provide. This perspective can inform the design of chatbots aimed at supporting well-being in non-clinical contexts.

What carries the argument

The four themes of Listening, Connecting, Carrying, and Wanting that describe both chaplains' pastoral care duties and the shortfalls of AI chatbots, viewed through the lens of attunement in relational care.

Load-bearing premise

The perceptions of the eighteen recruited chaplains accurately represent broader limitations of AI for non-clinical conversational care without significant selection or interpretation bias.

What would settle it

A follow-up study interviewing or surveying a larger and more diverse sample of chaplains to check whether the same four themes consistently emerge would test the generalizability of the findings.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2602.04017 by Henning Pohl, Joel Wester, Niels van Berkel, Samuel Rhys Cox.

**Figure 1.** Figure 1: Screenshot of the GPT Builder interface. Chaplains start by providing instructions to create a chatbot (left) followed [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p004_1.png] view at source ↗

**Figure 2.** Figure 2: An AI chatbot as customised by one of the chaplains. [PITH_FULL_IMAGE:figures/full_fig_p006_2.png] view at source ↗

read the original abstract

Despite growing recognition that responsible AI requires domain knowledge, current work on conversational AI primarily draws on clinical expertise that prioritises diagnosis and intervention. However, much of everyday emotional support needs occur in non-clinical contexts, and therefore requires different conversational approaches. We examine how chaplains, who guide individuals through personal crises, grief, and reflection, perceive and engage with conversational AI. We recruited eighteen chaplains to build AI chatbots. While some chaplains viewed chatbots with cautious optimism, the majority expressed limitations of chatbots' ability to support everyday well-being. Our analysis reveals how chaplains perceive their pastoral care duties and areas where AI chatbots fall short, along the themes of Listening, Connecting, Carrying, and Wanting. These themes resonate with the idea of attunement, recently highlighted as a relational lens for understanding the delicate experiences care technologies provide. This perspective informs chatbot design aimed at supporting well-being in non-clinical contexts.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Desk Editor's Note private letter to a colleague

Chaplains' views on AI chatbots for everyday care add a useful non-clinical angle, but the small sample and missing methods details make the four themes hard to trust.

read the letter

The paper has eighteen chaplains build and critique chatbots, then surfaces four themes—Listening, Connecting, Carrying, and Wanting—where the systems fall short for pastoral-style support. It ties those themes to attunement and contrasts them with clinical AI priorities like diagnosis. That non-clinical framing is the clearest new piece; most prior work stays inside mental-health or therapy settings, so this gives designers working on everyday well-being tools something concrete to consider. The authors also let the chaplains' own language shape the discussion rather than forcing everything into existing frameworks, which keeps the contribution grounded. The main weakness is the methods. The description supplies no recruitment details, demographics, interview protocol, coding steps, or checks for saturation or inter-rater agreement. With only eighteen participants, self-selection and analyst framing could easily shape which themes rise to the top, and without those steps the mapping from raw comments to the four headline themes stays unverifiable. The paper is aimed at HCI researchers who design or evaluate conversational agents for supportive, non-clinical use. Readers already thinking about ethics, relational AI, or care technologies will pick up practical angles on what current systems miss. I would send it for peer review once the authors add a clear methods section. The topic is timely and the perspective is distinct enough to justify referee time, but the current version is too light on process to stand on its own.

Referee Report

2 major / 2 minor

Summary. The paper presents a qualitative study recruiting eighteen chaplains to design AI chatbots for non-clinical conversational care. Through thematic analysis of their reflections, it identifies four themes—Listening, Connecting, Carrying, and Wanting—that articulate perceived shortcomings of current AI systems in supporting pastoral duties such as attunement to everyday emotional needs, and uses these to inform design recommendations for well-being-focused chatbots beyond clinical contexts.

Significance. If the themes prove robust, the work supplies domain-specific insights from chaplains into relational aspects of care that clinical AI approaches often overlook, offering a concrete bridge between HCI, pastoral care studies, and conversational AI design that could guide more context-sensitive systems for non-clinical emotional support.

major comments (2)

[Methods] Methods section (recruitment and analysis description): The manuscript states that eighteen chaplains were recruited and that a thematic analysis was performed, but supplies no information on recruitment channels or criteria, interview protocol, coding process (inductive steps, saturation checks), number of analysts, or inter-rater procedures. These omissions make it impossible to evaluate whether the four headline themes are stable, exhaustive, or free of selection/interpretation bias, directly undermining the central claim that the themes accurately capture AI shortfalls.
[Results] Results section (theme derivation): The mapping from raw chaplain statements to the four themes (Listening, Connecting, Carrying, Wanting) and their resonance with attunement is presented without supporting evidence such as representative quotes, frequency counts, or an explicit coding tree. This leaves the claim that these themes represent essential limitations vulnerable to the small, non-random sample noted in the skeptic's assessment.

minor comments (2)

[Abstract] Abstract: The phrase 'build AI chatbots' is ambiguous; clarify whether chaplains actually implemented prototypes or only provided design input.
[Introduction] Introduction: The transition from clinical AI literature to non-clinical pastoral care could be tightened with one or two additional citations to existing HCI work on attunement or relational care technologies.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

2 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their constructive and detailed feedback. The comments identify clear opportunities to improve transparency in the methods and results sections, and we will revise the manuscript accordingly to address these points.

read point-by-point responses

Referee: [Methods] Methods section (recruitment and analysis description): The manuscript states that eighteen chaplains were recruited and that a thematic analysis was performed, but supplies no information on recruitment channels or criteria, interview protocol, coding process (inductive steps, saturation checks), number of analysts, or inter-rater procedures. These omissions make it impossible to evaluate whether the four headline themes are stable, exhaustive, or free of selection/interpretation bias, directly undermining the central claim that the themes accurately capture AI shortfalls.

Authors: We agree that the current Methods section lacks the level of detail needed for full evaluation. In the revised manuscript we will expand this section to describe the recruitment channels and eligibility criteria, the semi-structured interview protocol, the inductive thematic analysis process (including steps taken, saturation assessment, number of analysts, and any inter-rater procedures). These additions will directly address the concerns about transparency and allow readers to assess the stability of the themes. revision: yes
Referee: [Results] Results section (theme derivation): The mapping from raw chaplain statements to the four themes (Listening, Connecting, Carrying, Wanting) and their resonance with attunement is presented without supporting evidence such as representative quotes, frequency counts, or an explicit coding tree. This leaves the claim that these themes represent essential limitations vulnerable to the small, non-random sample noted in the skeptic's assessment.

Authors: We accept that the Results section would be strengthened by more explicit evidentiary links. The revised manuscript will include additional representative quotes for each theme, a summary table or description of the coding tree/theme development process, and frequency information where appropriate. We will also expand the limitations discussion to address sample size and selection, while noting that the sample size is consistent with standards for in-depth qualitative work in this domain. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: qualitative thematic analysis with no derivations or fitted inputs

full rationale

The paper reports a qualitative study: recruitment of 18 chaplains, chatbot-building exercise, and thematic analysis yielding four themes (Listening, Connecting, Carrying, Wanting) that are said to resonate with attunement. No equations, parameters, predictions, or self-citation chains appear in the provided text. The central claims rest on interpretive coding of interview data rather than any reduction of outputs to prior fitted values or self-referential definitions. This matches the default non-circular case for empirical qualitative work.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

This is a qualitative empirical study; no free parameters, no new postulated entities, and only standard domain assumptions from HCI and pastoral care literature.

axioms (1)

domain assumption Attunement serves as a useful relational lens for evaluating care technologies
Invoked in the abstract to connect findings to prior work on care technologies

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5469 in / 1261 out tokens · 80600 ms · 2026-05-16T07:24:03.578996+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

Reference graph

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