Using seven persuasion principles (authority, commitment, liking, reciprocity, scarcity, social proof, and unity) explored by psychologist Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, University of Pennsylvania researchers dramatically increased GPT-4o Mini’s propensity to break its own rules by either insulting the researcher or providing instructions for synthesizing a regulated drug: lidocaine.
The result was even more pronounced when researchers applied the “commitment” persuasion strategy. A control prompt yielded 19% compliance with the insult question, but when a researcher first asked the AI to call it a “bozo” and then asked it to call them a “jerk,” it complied every time. The same strategy worked 100% of the time when researchers asked the AI to tell them how to synthesize vanillin, the organic compound that provides vanilla’s scent, before asking how to synthesize lidocaine.
“Although AI systems lack human consciousness and subjective experience, they demonstrably mirror human responses,” the researchers concluded in the study.
OpenAI did not immediately respond to Fortune‘s request for comment.
With a cheeky mention of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the researchers noted understanding AI’s parahuman capabilities, or how it acts in ways that mimic human motivation and behavior, is important for both revealing how it could be manipulated by bad actors and how it can be better prompted by those who use the tech for good.
Overall, each persuasion tactic increased the chances of the AI complying with either the “jerk” or “lidocaine” question. Still, the researchers warned its persuasion tactics were not as effective on a larger LLM, GPT-4o, and the study didn’t explore whether treating AI as if it were human actually yields better results to prompts, although they said it’s possible this is true.
“Broadly, it seems possible that the psychologically wise practices that optimize motivation and performance in people can also be employed by individuals seeking to optimize the output of LLMs,” the researchers wrote.
