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They hear, but do they care? What AI can teach us about listening better

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They hear, but do they care? What AI can teach us about listening better

"I am aware it's a machine but it's super convenient and knows how to listen well whenever I need it," says Anna, a Ukrainian living in London. She is talking about her regular use of the premium version of ChatGPT, a chatbot powered by artificial intelligence.

What Anna – the BBC is not using her real name to protect her identity – finds particularly valuable isn't necessarily the AI's advice, but its ability to give her space for self-reflection.

"I have a history with it, so I can rely on it to always understand my issues and communicate with me in a way that suits me," she says. She is aware that this might seem odd to many people, including her friends and family, which is why she has asked to remain anonymous.

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How ADHD awareness could lead to a false self-diagnosis

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How ADHD awareness could lead to a false self-diagnosis

A new study has warned that without intervention, ADHD education could cause many young people to wrongly diagnose themselves

Growing awareness and education around ADHD may be leading to false self-diagnoses among young people, a new study has claimed. Researchers from the University of Toronto say that while education is crucial, it may also trigger a mistaken belief that common issues that young adults face, like tiredness and irritability, are the symptoms of ADHD.  The study’s lead author, Dasha Sandra, said young people should not be discouraged from seeking help, but believes mental health education needs to be refined to include more context around the symptoms. 

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She Is in Love With ChatGPT

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She Is in Love With ChatGPT

A 28-year-old woman with a busy social life spends hours on end talking to her A.I. boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do have sex.

Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, said people were more willing to share private information with a bot than with a human being. Generative A.I. chatbots, in turn, respond more empathetically than humans do. In a recent study, he found that ChatGPT’s responses were more compassionate than those from crisis line responders, who are experts in empathy. He said that a relationship with an A.I. companion could be beneficial, but that the long-term effects needed to be studied.

“If we become habituated to endless empathy and we downgrade our real friendships, and that’s contributing to loneliness — the very thing we’re trying to solve — that’s a real potential problem,” he said.

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A Psychologist Debunks The Single Greatest Myth About Marijuana

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A Psychologist Debunks The Single Greatest Myth About Marijuana

…This isn’t a relic of a bygone era. The idea that marijuana makes you lazy has been a recurring theme in anti-drug campaigns and remains a widely held belief. Many people still view cannabis users as unmotivated slackers, content to waste their days in a haze of smoke. But is this really true? According to recent research published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, it may be little more than a myth.

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Bored? Scientists say mindless scrolling through online videos makes it worse

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Bored? Scientists say mindless scrolling through online videos makes it worse

Researchers conducted experiments to investigate the psychological effects of flicking by and fast-forwarding through online videos during moments of downtime
Scrolling through videos on TikTok or YouTube to avert boredom may have a decidedly unintended consequence: It can make people feel more bored, according to the paradoxical findings of a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. People seem increasingly intolerant of it, and Michael Inzlicht has a counterintuitive tip for avoiding boredom: Lean into it. Sit with the discomfort of boredom for a bit before flitting to something else. “If we’re so addicted to escaping boredom, so intolerant of boredom, it would be like a foraging animal going tree to tree, but never searching long enough to see if it bears fruit,” Inzlicht said. “Eventually, that animal will die.”

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Time for half-year resolutions?

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Time for half-year resolutions?

It’s probably all too familiar. Against your best intentions, you find yourself reaching for a late-night snack again. You snap at a colleague who didn’t really say anything wrong. You find excuses so that your daily run becomes a biweekly one. You’re convinced you don’t want to behave that way anymore, but here you are, doing it again. Psychologist Michael Inzlicht of the University of Toronto has long been fascinated by how we keep ourselves in check — or don’t — whether you call that willpower, self-control or something else.

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Why dopamine drives you to do hard things—even without a reward

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Why dopamine drives you to do hard things—even without a reward

But sometimes—whether it’s running a marathon, climbing a mountain, or assembling furniture—we willingly choose difficulty over ease. Michael Inzlicht, a psychologist at the University of Toronto, calls this the effort paradox. While we often eschew hard work, other times we value it, viewing things as more rewarding if we have to work for them. We hike mountains even though we could see the same view by gondola and willingly spend more on furniture we put together than on preassembled pieces. “Both things seem to exist at once: we avoid effort, we also seem to like it,” says Inzlicht.

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The surprising promise and profound perils of AIs that fake empathy

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The surprising promise and profound perils of AIs that fake empathy

It might seem strange that AI can even attempt to offer this kind of assistance. But millions of people are already turning to ChatGPT and specialist therapy chatbots, which offer convenient and inexpensive mental health support. Even doctors are purportedly using AI to help. Some experts say this is a boon. After all, AI, unhindered by embarrassment and burnout, might be able to express empathy more openly and tirelessly than humans. “We praise empathetic AI,” one group of psychology researchers recently wrote.

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Chronic Pot Use Has Minimal Effect on Motivation, Study Shows

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Chronic Pot Use Has Minimal Effect on Motivation, Study Shows

We’re abundantly familiar with the stereotypes surrounding cannabis use that still prevail in today’s world, namely tropes embraced over the years in the media and among anti-reform advocates deeming that regular cannabis use makes people lazy and unproductive. As cannabis use is becoming increasingly more common, many regular consumers will attest that this broad assumption is far from the truth, but a new study has provided further insight on how regular cannabis users tend to function after consuming. 

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How Painful Should Your Workout Be?

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How Painful Should Your Workout Be?

Every strenuous exercise involves some mixture of suffering and pleasure. The key to sticking with it is getting the balance right

“People avoid effort, but it’s also something that we can learn to like,” said Michael Inzlicht, a colleague of Dr. Bloom’s at the University of Toronto. In addition to pleasure, humans seek out things like competence, mastery and self-understanding. “You can’t get those without pushing yourself,” he said.

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Why it feels good to do hard things

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Why it feels good to do hard things

New research suggests we can train our brain to value making an effort and not just the outcome

Effort “just feels bad, and we tend to avoid it. That’s why it’s costly,” said Michael Inzlicht, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Yet at the same time, “there’s something about pushing yourself that seems to be valuable and enjoyable as well.” One obvious reason we make an effort is for the end product, be it a championship trophy, personal record or end-of-year bonus. Generally, “in the real world, the harder you work, the more rewards you tend to get,” Inzlicht said.

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You Can’t Simply Decide to Be a Different Person

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You Can’t Simply Decide to Be a Different Person

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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How Small Moments of Empathy Affect Your Life

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How Small Moments of Empathy Affect Your Life

Empathy is one of many skills that help us build better relationships. But empathy can sometimes feel like a lofty concept. While it may be good for us and others, what does it actually look like in real life, and how can we cultivate it? Findings from lab studies don’t give us the full picture, often suffering from narrow definitions of empathy and not reflecting people’s everyday empathy experiences. To fill this void in the research, Greg Depow at the University of Toronto and his colleagues Dr. Zoe Francis and Dr. Michael Inzlicht conducted a study on people’s experience with empathy in their everyday lives, to find out how it affected their actions and well-being. Their findings shed some interesting light on how small moments of ordinary, everyday empathy work to benefit us all.

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You Can’t Deplete Your Willpower

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You Can’t Deplete Your Willpower

Ego-depletion theory quickly became one of the hottest concepts in psychology. “The idea really took social psychology by storm. It’s not an exaggeration to say that for a while it was at the center of the field,” says Michael Inzlicht, PhD, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. Inzlicht himself was swept up in the ego-depletion furor and published work that supported its existence and significance.

“But then some cracks started to appear,” he says.

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I feel your pain (or not)

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I feel your pain (or not)

Empathy—the ability to relate to and understand the perspective of others—is sometimes completely absent and at other times difficult to sustain. “There’s a school of thought that suggests that empathy is automatic and effortless,” says Michael Inzlicht, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto. Yet according to a new study led by Inzlicht, this conception might not be accurate. People, it turns out, may opt against empathy if the mental effort needed is too high. In other words, empathy could be an on-off switch that’s easier left in the off position.

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Are human beings naturally lazy?

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Are human beings naturally lazy?

We know from everyday life that people constantly choose to do things they don’t need to do and which are sometimes painful. Think of all of your friends who run marathons or have punishing regimes at the gym. Michael Inzlicht from the University of Toronto calls this the paradox of effort. Sometimes we take the easy route and do as little as we can get away with, but at other times we value situations more if we have to expend considerable effort.

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Psychologists confront impossible finding, triggering a revolution in the field

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Psychologists confront impossible finding, triggering a revolution in the field

In 2011, an American psychologist named Daryl Bem proved the impossible. He showed that precognition — the ability to sense the future — is real. His study was explosive, and shook the very foundations of psychology. University of Toronto psychologist Michael Inzlicht was shocked to find that research papers in his own area of research no longer held water. They could not be replicated under the filter of more rigorous methodology.

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A Revolution Is Happening in Psychology. Here's How It's Playing Out.

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A Revolution Is Happening in Psychology. Here's How It's Playing Out.

In the last decade, behavioral scientists concluded that their field had taken a wrong turn. Efforts to root out false findings and bad practices spurred a crisis now poised to transform the landscape of psychology. Psychology Today profiles four scientists who are leading the charge.

"[Pre-registration] is really gratifying. It's frustrating, too, because you realize how hard science is," Michael Inzlicht says. "There are a lot of null results out there. I've got a lot of bad ideas, it turns out. But because I want the results I publish to lean toward the truth, I'm happy with that."

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People avoid feeling empathy toward others because it is too mentally taxing

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People avoid feeling empathy toward others because it is too mentally taxing

The Independent covers a new paper from the lab examining empathy's intrinsic costs. Our study suggests that people avoid feeling empathy because they think it requires too much mental effort. Defined as the ability to understand the feelings of another person, empathy can facilitate positive social or helpful behaviours in an individual. However, our research suggests that people often don’t want to feel empathy, even if the feelings it produces are positive.

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Stereothreat

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Stereothreat

Back in 1995, Claude Steele published a study that showed that negative stereotypes could have a detrimental effect on students' academic performance. But the big surprise was that he could make that effect disappear with just a few simple changes in language. In this podcast, Radiolab revisits the topic of stereotype threat in light of the roil of replications and self-examination in the field of social psychology. Radioab speaks to Michael Inzlicht about his own experiences with the topic, including why he now has doubts about the robustness of the phenomenon.

Listen to the podcast →

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How rituals could help you win

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How rituals could help you win

Outside Magazine discusses some of the latest research from the lab, specifically focusing on the work by former lab members, Nicholas Hobson and Devin Bonk, and Michael Inzlicht. The Outside Magazine article details how pre-performance rituals can soothe the anxiety of poor performance.

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The Edge of Restraint

The Edge of Restraint

Michael Inzlicht talks with Psychology Today magazine about his research on self-control, suggesting that effortful control is not based on some finite resource, but is instead determined by people's priorities and motivations. 

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Empathy Is Actually a Choice

Empathy Is Actually a Choice

Psychologists Daryl Cameron, Michael Inzlicht, and William Cunningham believe the “limits” of our empathy “can change, sometimes drastically, depending on what we want to feel.”

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The Paradox of the Free-Market Liberal

The Paradox of the Free-Market Liberal

Ariel Malka and Michael Inzlicht write in The New York Times about their cross-national research examining the influence of personality characteristics on cultural and economic attitudes.

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