Tuesday, January 20, 2026
12:10pm-1:30pm
MC 331
5 King's College Road
Location: MC331 and online
Abstract: As loneliness rises and many people lack the emotional support they need, empathic AI may offer a surprising solution, offering emotional support where human connections often fall short. This talk investigates whether AI can provide empathy that not only rivals but occasionally surpasses human expressions. Drawing on multiple studies, I assess AI-generated empathy from both third-party evaluations and first-person experiences. Results show that AI can simulate empathy effectively, sometimes even preferred over human responses. However, despite its effectiveness, many people are hesitant to embrace empathic AI, not due to the technology’s limitations, but (in part) because of moralized beliefs about the role AI should play in society. I further explore how AI expressions of empathy, while often well-received, can also be dangerous due to their potential to affirm poor thinking, delusions, and incorrect solutions. This issue of sycophancy is especially concerning in mental health domains, where reinforcing delusional thinking could have fatal consequences. While empathic AI holds promise, sycophantic AI is a serious concern and must be carefully considered as we move toward integrating this technology into our emotional lives.
Biography: Michael Inzlicht is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto, with a cross-appointment as Professor in the Department of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management. He is also a Research Lead at the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology & Society. His research sits at the boundaries of social psychology and cognitive science, exploring the paradoxes of human motivation—particularly why people both avoid and find meaning in mental effort, and how digital technologies are reshaping behavior and wellbeing. He has pioneered research showing that empathy is cognitively demanding and often avoided because of its mental costs, challenging common assumptions about human compassion. His current work examines how exerting effort paradoxically increases feelings of meaning, how rapid content switching on digital platforms increases boredom, whether artificial intelligence can express empathy more effectively than humans, and the psychological effects of recreational cannabis use.
Michael completed his B.Sc. in Anatomical Sciences at McGill University in 1994, his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Brown University in 2001, and his postdoctoral fellowship in Applied Psychology at New York University in 2004. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and edited two books, with his work cited over 34,000 times. His research has been featured in major media outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian, NPR, The Washington Post, BBC News, The Globe and Mail, TIME, Forbes, and Science, among many others. His research and teaching have been recognized with the Carol and Ed Diener Mid-Career Award in Social Psychology, the Wegner Theoretical Innovation Prize, the ISCON Best Social Cognition Paper Award, and Professor of the Year. He has also been recognized as among the top 1% of most-cited psychologists in the world for four consecutive years (2022-2025). He co-hosts the podcast Two Psychologists Four Beers and writes the Substack newsletter Speak Now Regret Later.
Michael is a first-generation college student.
To help us plan, please register at the below link:
shulab.mie.utoronto.ca/events/psycheng-seminar-registration-2026-jan-20-dr-michael-inzlicht