How does your expectation
affect your behavior?
The placebo effect of AI
Most of us know the story of the sugar pill: a patient is given a pill without any active substance and still feels better. Not because the medicine actually works, but because the expectation is powerful enough to set our body and mind in motion. And it works! No external intervention, just the expectation that activates the brain. The placebo effect is stronger than we sometimes realize. In medicine, patients can genuinely benefit from a treatment that contains no active ingredients. And today, the phenomenon goes beyond pills alone.
Researchers Kosch, Welsch and colleagues extended this phenomenon to an area that increasingly shapes our daily lives: Artificial Intelligence (AI). What happens when we believe AI helps us, even when it doesn’t? What is the placebo effect of AI in the interaction between humans and computers? And how does it influence our behavior?
Your first thoughts: friend or enemy
Kosch and Welsch asked participants to solve a series of word puzzles. One group was told that a smart AI assistant supported them: the system would adjust the difficulty of the puzzles based on their stress level and previous answers. The other group received no assistance. What the participants didn’t know is that in reality, no one really received support. Everyone received exactly the same puzzles, from start to finish.(ACM Digital Library, 2023)
Yet there was a difference in outcome. The group that thought they had been helped by AI felt more confident, approached the puzzles with greater focus, and afterward were convinced that the AI had improved their performance. Their expectation alone was enough to influence how they felt and behaved.
This raises an intriguing question: where does our sense of capability come from? From our own skills and knowledge, or from external factors such as technology, compliments, systems, or feedback?
The moment we believe support is available, we tend to feel more capable and perform better. At the same time, it shows how easily we can become unconsciously dependent on external factors, while the real key often lies within ourselves.
The first domino
What makes this experiment so fascinating is that it shows how strongly our thoughts influence our behavior. It was not the technology that made the difference, but the thought “I’m getting help” that caused more relaxation and better concentration, increasing the belief of a successful outcome. This is exactly where a well-known psychological model comes in. The model illustrates how an experience unfolds step by step:
- Event: you receive a puzzle and are told that AI will assist you.
- Thought: “I’m not on my own. This will probably go better.”
- Feeling: more calm and confidence.
- Behavior: you work with greater focus and energy.
- Outcome: better results and the belief that the AI helped.
You often have little control over the event itself. The puzzle appears. The deadline arrives. A comment is made. What you can influence is the thought that follows and everything that comes after it. That small shift can have a powerful impact. When you choose a positive thought early in the chain, it influences the entire sequence that follows.
This invites a moment of self-reflection. What thoughts automatically appear when you face a challenging situation? Are they supportive thoughts such as “I can learn this,” “I can ask for help,” “I have the skills to handle this”? Or are they limiting thoughts like “I can’t do this,” “others are better,” “this will fail anyway”? By becoming aware of these automatic thoughts, you can influence the very first step in the chain. That makes a significant difference in how you feel, how you act, and ultimately what happens.
Taking ownership of your thinking
The real question is this: do you allow circumstances and external factors to determine your mindset, or do you consciously choose which thoughts you give attention to? This AI experiment shows how powerful expectation can be. The 5G model provides a practical way to influence that process yourself. That is exactly where ownership of your own thinking and behavior begins.
Want to discover how to strengthen this in practice and learn how to use your thoughts more consciously to move forward? In the training course Master Your Mindset you explore your patterns, activate supportive thinking, and experience how small mental shifts can make a big difference.
