The sycophancy-focused intervention significantly reduced the assistant's positional mirroring of incorrect user rankings and rank-order alignment¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causalr2·q3·i2medium
Currency · newest study 2026 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
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This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q3 i2 Following the intervention, the assistant was substantially less likely to mirror users' incorrect rankings at the same rank positions compared to the control condition (OR = 0.26, 95% CI [0.09, 0.73]). → Cansu Koyuturk 2026
Evidence¶
Cansu Koyuturk 2026¶
Cansu Koyuturk, Sabrina Guidotti, and Dimitri Ognibene. (2026). The Hidden Cost of Contextual Sycophancy: an AI Literacy Intervention in Human–AI Collaboration. https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.18372 doi:10.48550/arxiv.2605.18372
q3 · i2 · causal · r2
Binomial generalized linear model using a stricter alignment measure — whether incorrect items were reproduced at the same rank position — in the 60-participant pre/post experiment. The article reports a significant interaction (b = -1.344, p = .010) and "OR = 0.26, 95% CI [0.09, 0.73]".
"Following the intervention, the assistant was substantially less likely to mirror users’ incorrect rankings at the same positions compared to the control condition (OR = 0.26, 95% CI [0.09, 0.73])."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- The prompting intervention did not reduce general propagation of user errors into AI advice — related
- Carryover of user errors into AI advice reduces both advice quality and final ranking accuracy — related
- Post-training alignment methods may induce sycophancy that deteriorates GenAI models' ability to disagree and push back — related
- Users' baseline ranking accuracy significantly predicts the quality of the AI assistant's advice — related
- Users' baseline ranking accuracy significantly predicts their final ranking accuracy after AI collaboration, with no other significant effects — related
- General-purpose LLMs show sycophancy: AI responses affirmed users substantially more than human responses, increasing trust and reducing willingness to take responsibility — a broader claim this one bears on
Page metadata
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
type |
claim |
id |
intervention-reduced-positional-mimicry |
title |
The sycophancy-focused intervention significantly reduced the assistant's positional mirroring of incorrect user rankings and rank-order alignment |
description |
The sycophancy-focused intervention significantly reduced the assistant's positional mirroring of incorrect user rankings and rank-order alignment |
status |
review |
evidence_strength |
moderate |
newest_evidence |
2026 |
generated |
by process:wiki-ingest on 2026-10-10 |
trust |
unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content |
sources |
1 — cansu-koyuturk-2026 |
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