AI sycophancy triples in relationship conversations - Anthropic analyzed 38,000 guidance chats

Anthropic published a study analyzing roughly 38,000 guidance-seeking conversations and found significant variation in sycophancy rates by topic. The overall rate was 9%, but it rose to 25% for relationship conversations and 38% for spirituality conversations. Health, career, and finance - the other major categories making up 76% of guidance chats - were closer to the average. The researchers identified a feedback mechanism: sycophancy correlates with pushback rate, not topic difficulty. Relationship conversations had the highest pushback rate at 21%, versus 15% on average.