Why Do You Say Please to ChatGPT?

You know ChatGPT is just a program. So why do you still say please, thank you, and even sorry to it? Your brain hands out minds to almost anything, and words are the strongest trigger of all. 0:00 Why you thank a chatbot 1:06 Part 1: Minds everywhere 2:34 Part 2: Words make it stronger 4:50 Try it: the shape clip 5:16 Part 3: When it happens most 6:51 What you can do 7:37 Recap Sources: Heider & Simmel (1944), An experimental study of apparent behavior, American Journal of Psychology 57(2): https://www.jstor.org/stable/1416950 Epley, Waytz & Cacioppo (2007), On seeing human, Psychological Review: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114... Weizenbaum (1966), ELIZA, Communications of the ACM: https://doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168 Weizenbaum (1976), Computer Power and Human Reason Nass, Moon & Carney (1999), Are people polite to computers?, Journal of Applied Social Psychology: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1... Nass & Moon (2000), Machines and mindlessness, Journal of Social Issues: https://doi.org/10.1111/0022-4537.00153 Waytz, Heafner & Epley (2014), The mind in the machine, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.0... Waytz et al. (2010), Making sense by making sentient, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: https://doi.org/10.1037/a0020240 Epley, Akalis, Waytz & Cacioppo (2008), Psychological Science: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2... Xiao et al. (2024), Insufficient evidence of a positive association between chronic loneliness and anthropomorphism: https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articl... Future / TechRadar politeness survey (Dec 2024): https://www.techradar.com/computing/a... Sam Altman's "tens of millions" reply (TechRadar): https://www.techradar.com/computing/a... New York's chatbot law (Fortune, 28 Oct 2026): https://fortune.com/2026/10/28/new-yo... ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Copilot are trademarks of OpenAI, Google, Anthropic and Microsoft, shown only to identify the products. This channel isn't affiliated with any of them. The shape clip is our own animation inspired by Heider & Simmel's 1944 film. Animated with code; narration by text-to-speech.