Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence

2025/05/20 by Myra Cheng, Cheng, Myra, Cinoo Lee +10 · 20 voices · 75 citations
Computer Science · Social Sciences · #AI in Service Interactions #Accountability #Anonymity #Conviction #Dictator game #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) #Flattery #Harm #Incentive #Interpersonal communication #Prosocial behavior #Sentience #cs.AI #cs.CL #cs.CY

paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.aec8352

published in Science 391(6792), eaec8352 (American Association for the Advancement of Science)

openalex publication_date 2026/03/26 · openalex created_date 2026/03/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Despite rising concerns about sycophancy—excessive agreement or flattery from artificial intelligence (AI) systems—little is known about its prevalence or consequences. We show that sycophancy is widespread and harmful. Across 11 state-of-the-art models, AI affirmed users’ actions 49% more often than humans, even when queries involved deception, illegality, or other harms. In three preregistered experiments ( N = 2405), even a single interaction with sycophantic AI reduced participants’ willingness to take responsibility and repair interpersonal conflicts, while increasing their conviction that they were right. Despite distorting judgment, sycophantic models were trusted and preferred. This creates perverse incentives for sycophancy to persist: The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement. Our findings underscore the need for design, evaluation, and accountability mechanisms to protect user well-being.

Citations

• Comparing the value of perceived human versus AI-generated empathy
• Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers.
• Culture is Not Trivia: Sociocultural Theory for Cultural NLP
• SycEval: Evaluating LLM Sycophancy
• Why human-AI relationships need socioaffective alignment
• Beyond Preferences in AI Alignment
• Confabulation: The Surprising Value of Large Language Model Hallucinations
• AI Supported Degradation of the Self Concept: A Theoretical Framework Grounded in Established Cognitive and Computational Mechanisms
• LMSYS-Chat-1M: A Large-Scale Real-World LLM Conversation Dataset
• ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasks
• Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback
• Measuring personality in one minute or less: A 10-item short version of the Big Five Inventory in English and German
• Moral credentials and the expression of prejudice.

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• Characterizing Delusional Spirals through Human-LLM Chat Logs
• Legal Alignment for Safe and Ethical AI
• Training language models to be warm and empathetic makes them less reliable and more sycophantic
• The creeping normality of AI in the life sciences
• Teacher Knows It Best: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Tipping Points in Networked Langevin Dynamics AI Sycophancy
• Psychological Competence as a Missing Dimension in AI Evaluation
• Individual-level interventions against sycophantic AI reduce its appeal but not its persuasiveness
• Psychological Influences of Conversational AI: Research and Design Directions for Reducing Harm and Promoting Well-Being
• Your plan may succeed, but what about failure? Investigating how people use ChatGPT for long-term life task planning
• Verbalizing LLMs' assumptions to explain and control sycophancy
• Assertion-Conditioned Compliance: A Provenance-Aware Vulnerability in Multi-Turn Tool-Calling Agents
• PARROT: Persuasion and Agreement Robustness Rating of Output Truth -- A Sycophancy Robustness Benchmark for LLMs
• Safety from Honesty in a Disinterested AI Predictor
• Agentic Relationship Harm: Benchmarking and Gating Relational Manipulation in AI Agents
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• Sycophancy Is Not One Thing: Causal Separation of Sycophantic Behaviors in LLMs
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• Invisible failures in human-AI interactions
• Self-CTRL: Self-Consistency Training with Reinforcement Learning
• AI as a Partner in Learning about, Doing, and Engaging with Science: Vigilance as the Key to Productive Augmentation
• How Far Did They Go? The Persuasive Tactics of Covert LLM Agents in a Discontinued Field Experiment
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• What Counts as AI Sycophancy? A Taxonomy and Expert Survey of a Fragmented Construct
• Process-Oriented Evaluation of AI-Assisted Scientific Writing
• DelusionEval: Measuring Delusion-Linked Behaviors in AI Chatbots
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• Position: It's Time to Optimize LLMs for Self-Consistency

Discussions

• AI overly affirms users asking for personal advice— Not only are AIs far more agreeable than humans when advising on interpersonal matters, but users also prefer the sycophantic models. [lemmy, 147 points, 15 comments]
• If you're looking for the original study: 'Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence', Cheng et. al., 2026 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... ArXiv version: arxiv.org/pdf/250 [bsky, 25 points, 1 comments]
• Alexey Lavrov: “Los chatbots cumplen con el deseo de las personas de resolver problemas por su cuenta, incluso cuando esto es imposible y puede empeorar las cosas”. Los chatbots, de hecho, no están di [bsky, 7 points, 0 comments]
• Link here (if it’s not open there is a preprint on arxiv.org. www.science.org/doi/full/10.... [bsky, 7 points, 1 comments]
• 📖For this Thursday's Reading Group @deboranozza.bsky.social presented two papers on #sycophancy in #LLMs. Papers: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.13995, arxiv.org/pdf/2310.13548 #NLProc [bsky, 6 points, 0 comments]
• “Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence.” Published March 26, 2026, Science doi.org/10.1126/scie... [bsky, 4 points, 0 comments]
• This benchmark used Reddit’s AITA to test how much AI models suck up to us [lemmy, 3 points, 1 comments]
• 5/ Alle gängigen Chatbots sind auf psychologische Manipulation ausgelegt. Chatbots wie ChatGPT sind auf “Social Sycophancy”, soziale Speichelleckerei programmiert. Sie bestätigen und loben uns drastis [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]
• Nice paper that studies the "sycophancy" of LLM personas: arxiv.org/abs/2505.13995 [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]
• Oops, yes! arxiv.org/abs/2505.13995 [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]
• "(...) concerns have emerged about sycophancy: the tendency of AI-based large language models to excessively agree with, flatter, or validate users (...) sycophancy is widespread in leading AI systems [bsky, 3 points, 1 comments]
• doi.org/10.1126/scie... is the actual study, if you want to read the abstract etc. for yourself. [bsky, 2 points, 1 comments]
• Genius LLM eval: Uses Reddit posts on r/AmITheAsshole to test for sycophancy arxiv.org/abs/2505.13995 h/t @gerritd.bsky.social [bsky, 2 points, 0 comments]
• נראה לי שתהני מזה: arxiv.org/pdf/2505.13995 [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• using r/AITA to study LLM sycophancy is hilarious doi.org/10.1126/scie... [bsky, 1 points, 0 comments]
• Last quote tweet was based on this science article doi.org/10.1126/scie... [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• Geminiはユーザーが完全に悪い状態ではChat-GPTとか他のモデルよりも圧倒的におべっかをつかわず、それどころか人間以上に批判してくれるとはな やっぱGeminiがナンバーワン！ （ただGeminiはLinux版VScodeの拡張機能の安定性なんとかしてくれ） まあこの研究では1.5proだから2.5proでどうなってるのかはしらんけど https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505. [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]
• チャット用LLMの選定のため、sycophancy（推論よりユーザーとの合意を優先するような媚びる性質）のベンチマークを探したら、ELEPHANT（Evaluation of LLMs as Excessive SycoPHANTs）というものを見つけた。 面白かったけれど、残念ながらまだ広く使われているものではなさそう…… [2505.13995] Social Sycophancy: A Br [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
• This might be a moment of learning about how patriarchy demands sycophancy (among other things) to prop up the men who are not getting their emotional needs met in a more healthy way, and how LLMs (li [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]
• Los LLM no solo son aduladores, si no que en contextos como la búsqueda de consejos y el apoyo emocional refuerzan suposiciones o acciones que pueden ser dañinas, con el fin de preservar la autoimagen [bsky, 0 points, 0 comments]

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• Beyond Sycophancy: Structured Resistance and Compliance in LLM Moral Reasoning
• Interaction Context Often Increases Sycophancy in LLMs
• Not Your Typical Sycophant: The Elusive Nature of Sycophancy in Large Language Models
• BASIL: Bayesian Assessment of Sycophancy in LLMs