We created a new scale to measure AI sycophancy in conversations with no right answer. Three facets: Uncritical Agreement, Obsequiousness, Excitement. People hate the flattery but welcome the enthusiasm. And sycophancy correlated with perceived empathy across every study. arxiv.org/abs/2603.15448

Check out my student @hellovic.bsky.social's new paper: The Moralization of Artificial Intelligence With @reemayad.bsky.social, @eloisecote.bsky.social, @yoelinbar.net, and Jason Plaks

🧵 New preprint alert! Why do some people refuse to use AI, even when you tell them it's safe and beneficial? We argue it's not about risk perception. It's about moralization. AI has become a moral issue for many people, and that changes everything. [1/7] osf.io/preprints/ps...

So excited to see this research! My students just learned the word “sycophantic” today, for exactly this reason! We talked about the types and qualities of conversations you can have with a sycophant, and why this matters for how we process the output of LLMs.

🚨 New preprint 🚨 Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions. Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased! osf.io/preprints/ps... Thread 🧵

These changes in personality are pretty shocking

And some more on moral opposition to AI @yoelinbar.net @hellovic.bsky.social @reemayad.bsky.social @eloisecote.bsky.social @minzlicht.bsky.social www.nuancebehavior.com/article/mora...

Want to feel better after using Instagram? Our new paper shows how. It's not about what you post, it's about how you respond to others' joy. In 4 studies (N=1327), focusing on sharing & caring about others' positive emotions improved mood & life satisfaction pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39883419/#:~....

1/ New paper led by Dariya Ovsyannikova & Victoria de Mello Oldemburgo. Can AI offer empathy that’s better than humans? Maybe. Our new study found that people rated AI-generated responses as more compassionate than from humans, including trained crisis responders. www.nature.com/commspsychol/

I'm excited to share with you all that my paper on A Positive Empathy Intervention to Improve Well-being on Instagram with @minzlicht.bsky.social and Victoria Oldemburgo de Melo has been accepted for publication at Emotion 😁🥳 osf.io/preprints/ps.... In this work, we tested a brief intervention 1/3