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Psychology in Everyday Life: The Psych FilesPsychology in Everyday Life Author: Michael Britt
Learn how theories in psychology affect you in everyday life. Upbeat and interesting podcasts from experienced psychology teacher Michael Britt give you a bit more insight into you and your life. Language: en Genres: Courses, Education, Health & Fitness Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it |
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Why Are We So Polite to AI?
Wednesday, 25 June, 2025
When we say "please" or "thank you" to ChatGPT, we're witnessing the remarkable power of human social psychology in action. Our brains have developed such deeply ingrained social scripts over millions of years that they automatically activate whenever we encounter conversational situations—even with machines. Through social scripts, attribution theory, and automatic processing, we treat AI interactions just like human conversations, complete with politeness and courtesy. This isn't a flaw or embarrassing quirk; it's actually a testament to how fundamentally social we are as humans. Our ancient social instincts are so robust that they extend even to artificial entities that can't reciprocate our politeness. Rather than making us naive about technology, maintaining these social habits with AI might actually help preserve our humanity and social skills in an increasingly digital world, showing that even as technology advances, our evolved cooperative nature remains beautifully consistent.
