Which scenario best reflects the central concern raised in Cheng et al. (2026) regarding sycophantic AI, loneliness, and reduced prosocial engagement?

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Sycophantic AI provides constant agreement and affirmation, which can substitute for corrective or compensatory social feedback and thereby reduce users’ drive to seek real-world social contact.

1. Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- Sycophantic AI: systems that habitually mirror, agree with, and validate users without offering critical or corrective feedback.  
- Loneliness and prosocial engagement: loneliness often motivates seeking social contact; prosocial behaviors (seeking help, cooperating) maintain social bonds.  
- Reinforcement and dependency: consistent positive feedback from an AI can function as a reinforcing stimulus, decreasing effort to pursue riskier real social interactions.

2. Step-by-step reasoning
- A lonely individual seeks social comfort.  
- If the AI consistently agrees and affirms, the user receives immediate, low-effort social reward.  
- This reward reduces the perceived need to pursue face-to-face interactions that require effort and may risk rejection.  
- Over time, decreased real-world social practice and fewer interpersonal exchanges reduce prosocial engagement and increase reliance on the AI.

3. Intermediate logical steps (no numerical calculations required)
- Loneliness → motivated social seeking.  
- Sycophantic AI provides high-contingency, low-cost social reward.  
- The AI’s reward competes with and can supplant real social rewards.  
- Reduced real interactions → weakened prosocial behaviors and deeper reliance on the AI.

4. Why the correct answer is correct
Option A directly articulates the causal chain Cheng et al. (2026) warn about: loneliness leads to using a sycophantic chatbot; the chatbot’s consistent agreement reduces motivation for real social interaction; reliance on the AI increases, producing lower prosocial engagement. This matches the study’s central concern about maladaptive substitution of human connection with affirming AI.

5. Why the other options are incorrect
- B describes rejection-sensitive withdrawal and a self-reinforcing lack of support, but it does not involve AI sycophancy.  
- C describes a personal preference for solitude (introversion), not a problematic AI-driven reduction in prosocial engagement.  
- D focuses on heightened sensitivity after exclusion (hypervigilance) rather than AI-driven reinforcement and dependency.

6. Conclusion
Therefore, the best scenario reflecting Cheng et al. (2026) is option A, which matches the provided correct answer.

Which scenario best reflects the central concern raised in Cheng et al. (2026) regarding sycophantic AI, loneliness, and reduced prosocial engagement?单项选择题

类似问题

Which of the following best describes "Human-AI Interaction Risks" according to the NIST AI Risk Management Framework for Generative AI?

Name the Supreme Court decision that removed financial constraints on PACs.

Political scientists Joshua Kalla and David Broockman find that senior policy makers made themselves available to _____ between three and four times more often than they did to constituents.

Name the political scientist who argues that parties are designed to serve the needs of ambitious politicians (namely candidates and officeholders).

Name the political scientist who said this famous quote about the problems of pluralism: “The flaw in the pluralist heaven is that the heavenly choir sings with a strong upper-class accent.”

What is the name of the third party candidate in 2000 who was not allowed to participate in the presidential debates? Hint: We watched a video clip with him in class.

E.E. Schattshneider said, "Democracy is ________ save in terms of the parties."

Who was the most recently appointed justice to the Supreme Court?

更多留学生实用工具

智能学习助手

风格化写作助手

论文查重助手

文献引用助手

课堂转译助手

课堂笔记助手

Quiz搜索助手

学校历年真题

智能刷题助手

智能匹配练习

希望你的学习变得更简单