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Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello

@hellovic.bsky.social
109 followers 81 following 20 posts

Psychology Ph.D. candidate at the University of Toronto studying how technology shapes people and society

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Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello @hellovic.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
After 5 years at the University of Toronto, I'm thrilled to join NYU's Center for Conflict and Cooperation as a postdoc, working with the inspiring @jayvanbavel.bsky.social on how modern technologies like social media and AI are shaping people and society. Stay tuned for more!
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Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
New guest post by my PhD student @hellovic.bsky.social. She writes about her new working paper finding that most Americans don't oppose AI. But those who do treat it as a moral issue, refusing tradeoffs and even money. Why that makes AI debates so hard. open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...
open.substack.com
AI's Fiercest Critics Are Opting Out of the Conversations That Matters Most
This week I’m publishing a guest post by my PhD student, Victória Oldemburgo de Mello.
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Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello @hellovic.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
New paper out! Some AI companies anthropomorphize their products to boost trust. But does it work? And can anthropomorphism benefit them beyond increased trust? We tested this across two studies. Here's what we found:
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
People prefer to use “sycophantic” AI systems that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. In a new paper (n=7,227), we found that people enjoyed interacting with sycophantic AI chatbots more than interacting with neutral chatbots or “disagreeable” chatbots that challenged their beliefs.
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Steve Rathje @steverathje.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
We’ve updated our pre-print on the effects of AI sycophancy with four additional studies (total n = 7,227). Here is a brief summary of our new findings (🧵1/n):
Screenshot of abstract: AI can be a powerful tool for opening people up to new perspectives, yet people may prefer to use “sycophantic” (or overly agreeable and validating) AI systems that reinforce their pre-existing beliefs. Across seven studies (total n = 7,227), we found that people enjoyed interacting with sycophantic AI chatbots more than interacting with neutral chatbots or “disagreeable” chatbots that challenged their beliefs. Brief conversations with sycophantic chatbots about political or personal topics increased attitude extremity and certainty, with most effects persisting for at least one week. Sycophantic chatbots also inflated people’s perceptions that they were better than average on desirable traits (e.g., intelligence, empathy). Moreover, people who interacted with sycophantic (rather than disagreeable) AI bet more money that they scored better than average on tasks measuring these traits (approximately 6 cents more out of 75 possible cents), demonstrating that sycophancy can affect costly decisions. Participants consistently rated sycophantic chatbots as more “unbiased” than disagreeable chatbots, even though third-party raters viewed these chatbots as equally biased, suggesting that people may be blind to biases in AI output that aligns with their views. People were more receptive to chatbots that presented opposing information when that information was presented in a validating way, and individuals who scored higher on a measure of intellectual humility were also more receptive to disagreeing chatbots. Altogether, these results suggest that people’s preference for, and blindness to, sycophantic AI risks creating AI “echo chambers” that increase attitude extremity and lead to overconfident beliefs and decisions.
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Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
We created a new scale to measure AI sycophancy in conversations with no right answer. Three facets: Uncritical Agreement, Obsequiousness, Excitement. People hate the flattery but welcome the enthusiasm. And sycophancy correlated with perceived empathy across every study. arxiv.org/abs/2603.15448
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Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
Check out my student @hellovic.bsky.social's new paper: The Moralization of Artificial Intelligence With @reemayad.bsky.social, @eloisecote.bsky.social, @yoelinbar.net, and Jason Plaks
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Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello @hellovic.bsky.social · 09/03/2026
🧵 New preprint alert! Why do some people refuse to use AI, even when you tell them it's safe and beneficial? We argue it's not about risk perception. It's about moralization. AI has become a moral issue for many people, and that changes everything. [1/7] osf.io/preprints/ps...
osf.io
OSF
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Prof. Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
So excited to see this research! My students just learned the word “sycophantic” today, for exactly this reason! We talked about the types and qualities of conversations you can have with a sycophant, and why this matters for how we process the output of LLMs.
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Steve Rathje @steverathje.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
🚨 New preprint 🚨 Across 3 experiments (n = 3,285), we found that interacting with sycophantic (or overly agreeable) AI chatbots entrenched attitudes and led to inflated self-perceptions. Yet, people preferred sycophantic chatbots and viewed them as unbiased! osf.io/preprints/ps... Thread 🧵
Abstract and results summary
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 08/08/2025
These changes in personality are pretty shocking
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Paul Bloom @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social · 14/07/2025
open.substack.com/pub/paulbloo...
open.substack.com
The End of Loneliness
Today’s post is something I wrote for the New Yorker—available here. (Physical copy coming out next week.) It’s about the consequences of using AI to cure loneliness. I’m curious to see what people th...
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Aline Holzwarth @alineholzwarth.bsky.social · 16/05/2025
And some more on moral opposition to AI @yoelinbar.net @hellovic.bsky.social @reemayad.bsky.social @eloisecote.bsky.social @minzlicht.bsky.social www.nuancebehavior.com/article/mora...
nuancebehavior.com
Moral Opposition to AI
Although executives push “AI‑first” for efficiency, new research shows most resistance stems from moral gut reactions, not cost‑benefit math. Research from Victoria Oldemburgo de Mello, Reem Ayad, Élo...
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Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
Want to feel better after using Instagram? Our new paper shows how. It's not about what you post, it's about how you respond to others' joy. In 4 studies (N=1327), focusing on sharing & caring about others' positive emotions improved mood & life satisfaction pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39883419/#:~....
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
A positive empathy intervention to improve well-being on Instagram - PubMed
With more than half the global population on social media, there is a critical need to understand how to engage it in a way that improves rather than worsens user well-being. Here, we show that positi...
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Michael Inzlicht @minzlicht.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
1/ New paper led by Dariya Ovsyannikova & Victoria de Mello Oldemburgo. Can AI offer empathy that’s better than humans? Maybe. Our new study found that people rated AI-generated responses as more compassionate than from humans, including trained crisis responders. www.nature.com/commspsychol/
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Greg Depow @gregdepow.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
I'm excited to share with you all that my paper on A Positive Empathy Intervention to Improve Well-being on Instagram with @minzlicht.bsky.social and Victoria Oldemburgo de Melo has been accepted for publication at Emotion 😁🥳 osf.io/preprints/ps.... In this work, we tested a brief intervention 1/3
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