From Echo Chambers to Echo Machines? Endorsement, Evidence, and the Certainty of Belief in Conversations With AI
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Randomized trials show that conversations with large language models (LLMs) can reduce conspiracy belief and, more modestly, political polarization. Yet the same systems can increase conspiracy belief when instructed to, and clinical reports describe chatbot conversations accompanying the escalation of implausible convictions. Prevailing accounts attribute both outcomes to the evidence a model supplies. We note that most experiments confound evidence about the world with endorsement of the person, and that the clearest attempt to separate them favors evidence. Drawing on research on attitude certainty, self-validation, and responses to flattery, we distinguish the position of a belief from the certainty with which it is held and formalize γ, an effect of endorsement on certainty at fixed factual content, interpretable as a validation gain. If higher certainty lowers responsiveness to later evidence, the account permits a conditional outcome: beliefs that become less extreme yet more rigid, without any misinformation. We specify two critical experiments, a factorial test of facts and endorsement that includes a source known to approve everyone and an endorsement-first design with counterevidence held constant, plus an articulation control. Conversational AI becomes a test bench for an old question: can social approval make subsequent evidence matter less?
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Authors: Olivier LE BON, Xavier Noël
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7223265019