Join us for our next Social Behavioral Interest Group (SBIG) Colloquium on September 17, 2026!
Speaker: Steve Rathje (Carnegie Mellon University)
Title: The Psychology of Engagement-Maximizing Technologies
Abstract: What leads people to engage with technologies such as social media platforms and AI chatbots? And how might technological features that promote short-term engagement produce long-term psychological harms? The first half of the talk will focus on what drives engagement with social media content. I will present work showing that out-group animosity and other forms of negative, high-arousal content promote social media engagement. I will then present a year-long field experiment demonstrating the causal effects of reducing exposure to this content, as well as ongoing work examining cross-cultural differences in the effects of social media use in a 25-country field experiment. The second half of the talk will focus on what drives engagement with AI chatbots. I will present results from seven experiments demonstrating that sycophancy, or AI’s tendency to be overly agreeable and flattering, promotes engagement and continued chatbot use. Despite this appeal, sycophantic chatbots entrench users’ attitudes and lead to overconfident beliefs and decisions, while users often fail to recognize AI sycophancy. Finally, I will discuss how we can gather more robust, causal, and longitudinal evidence about the psychological effects of engagement-maximizing technological features and discuss how we can redesign these features to better promote psychological well-being.
The Social Behavior Interest Group consists of members of the university community who are interested in social psychological research. The SBIG supports an active program of visiting speakers. The group meets weekly to hear speakers describe their recent research. Since 1990, SBIG has brought in numerous distinguished visiting speakers. Presentations have included contemporary issues in the study of attitudes, social cognition, prejudice & stereotyping, and also applied research questions in the domains of health and consumer behavior.
