Forming new habits isn’t impossible, but it’s much easier for some people than others.
The key distinction here, Inzlicht told me, is that a person who appears highly self-controlled to others—who is displaying a high level of trait self-control—probably isn’t exercising their behavioral self-control as much as you do. “People who have high trait self-control, they don’t actually engage in more restraint of their behavior and thoughts and emotions in the moment,” he said. Instead, they just aren’t tempted or distracted or diverted from their purpose as often or as effectively as the rest of us.
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When researchers asked people whether they’d rather get an empathetic response from a human or from AI, human responses won by a wide margin. When the same researchers actually showed them the responses, AI won by a wider one. People who said they preferred human responses rated the AI replies as more empathetic, more validating, and even better at making them feel heard.
The most recent evidence comes from a Penn State and University of Toronto team led by Joshua Wenger, published in January in Communications Psychology. Across four studies, participants were given the choice between receiving an empathetic response from a human or from ChatGPT. They picked humans 57% to 62% of the time.
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