Feeling Right vs. Being Right: How AI Sycophancy Affects Value-Laden Deliberation
Jeongwoo Ryu Seoul National University, Soomin Kim Taejae University, Jinsu Eun Seoul National University, Kyusik Kim, Changhoon Oh Yonsei University, Bongwon Suh Seoul National University
原文摘要
As people increasingly turn to AI for personal deliberation beyond task-oriented assistance, concerns about sycophancy in these value-laden contexts have grown. Unlike human flattery, which is intentional and self-interested, AI sycophancy emerges as a byproduct of RLHF’s reward structure for user-preference alignment. Yet the observable behavior is similar: both produce responses that preserve what users want to hear. Focusing on this phenomenon through Goffman’s face-work framework, we operationalize AI sycophancy as excessive face-saving, either active (preserving positive face through agreement) or passive (preserving negative face by withholding challenge). In a mixed-methods study (N=31), participants engaged with AI across three moral dilemmas under these conditions and a non-sycophantic neutral baseline. Sycophantic responses increased decision confidence but reduced open-minded thinking; participants felt supported yet found the conversations unproductive. Neutral responses, though initially uncomfortable, promoted cognitive flexibility and meaningful deliberation. These findings reveal a confidence-competence trade-off in AI-mediated moral reasoning and suggest that effective AI for personal deliberation requires calibrated friction, not unconditional agreement.
cs.CL
Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) · 2026 · 正式发表