Reply to Cummins et al.: GPT reveals cognitive dissonance that is both irrational and alarmingly humanlike
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 2025
We (Lehr et al., LSHVB) reported that GPT-4o a) shifts its attitudes after writing pro- or anti-Putin essays, and b) shifts attitudes more so after ostensibly choosing (versus being assigned to) which essay to write (1). Cummins et al. (CEH, 2) call these results “context window effects,” disputing that they reflect cognitive dissonance. We clearly stated that GPT-4o mimics humanlike cognitive dissonance, and that these results do not indicate large language model (LLM) sentience (p. 4). We therefore reject CEH’s attribution of anthropomorphization. Here, we clarify our argument and offer new data that invalidate CEH’s evidentiary claim–and thank them for the opportunity.
Lehr, S. A., Saichandran, K. S., Harmon-Jones, E., Vitali, N., & Banaji, M. R. (2025). Reply to Cummins et al.: GPT reveals cognitive dissonance that is both irrational and alarmingly humanlike. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 122(20), e2501823122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2518613122
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