Affective Flow Language Model for Emotional Support Conversation

Abstract:Large language models (LLMs) have advanced emotional support conversation, but existing alignment methods rely mainly on sparse preferences at the response level or outcomes at the dialogue level, providing limited supervision for sequential strategy decisions in multi-turn interactions. This raises a key question: how can detailed process signals be derived from overall dialogue outcomes to guide the gradual adaptation of support strategies? We propose the Affective Flow Language Model (AFlow), which models multi-turn emotional support as an affective utility flow evolving along dialogue trajectories. AFlow searches diverse support trajectories and estimates the utility of intermediate dialogue states and candidate strategies. It further introduces Affective Flow Preference Optimization (AFPO), which uses a flow-balance objective defined over dialogue subpaths to propagate downstream preference signals to intermediate states and learn strategy transitions consistent with support outcomes over the full dialogue. AFlow introduces flow-balance learning into multi-turn affective interaction, providing a process-based approach to dynamic affect modeling and continuous strategy optimization. Experiments on ExTES and ESConv show consistent improvements in strategy alignment, response diversity, and generation quality across different model environments and evaluation settings. Our code is available at this https URL.

24 pages, 7 figures. Code available at this https URL

Computation and Language (cs.CL); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)

arXiv:2602.08826 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2602.08826v3 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2602.08826 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite

arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website.

Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them.

Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.