For anyone wondering, the PhD student's name is Myra Cheng.
Here's a link to an article about the study from the Stanford Report: link.
Across three preregistered studies, participants interacting with sycophantic AI became more convinced of their own rightness and less willing to repair relationships. Yet at the same time, participants rated sycophantic AI models as higher quality, more trustworthy, and more desirable for future use, which may explain why this behavior has persisted despite its harmful impacts.
Myra Cheng et al. "Sycophantic AI decreases prosocial intentions and promotes dependence." Science 391, eaec8352 (2026).
I would once again like to remind folks that the et al. at the end of a published article means someone published this as part of a community. Scientific research happens collaboratively. This is a super cool topic. But just highlighting one person instead of a team supports the ideas of an individualistic society and hides how much community and government support goes into this kind of work.
