Shoutout to my co-authors for their contributions. And thanks to co-author @lieselsharabi.bsky.social for covering our findings in a recent Psychology Today post.

Happy to share a copy of the manuscript before it is officially published later this month. 5/5

Christian’s choice to act as if the effective love letters were his own reflects how contemporary singles may use AI to court potential partners. 4/5

We call this the Cyrano effect. In Rostand’s (1975) Cyrano de Bergerac, Christian struggles to competently convey his feelings to Roxanne, employing Cyrano to write love letters on his behalf. 3/5

In a new study, my co-authors and I found that date request messages modified from AI output were rated by objective judges as more effective and effortful than those written by humans or AI alone. However, participant ratings of messages did not vary by source. 2/5

These results suggest that additional scholarship is needed to distinguish between actual smartphone use and perceptions of smartphone use. 6/

However, technological interference - when an individual perceives that their partner’s smartphone use prevents them from accomplishing their conversational objectives - was associated with greater dissatisfaction overall and at 1-minute intervals. 5/

We also coded for the amount of time a member of the dyad used their smartphone. Smartphone use (in seconds) was not associated with dissatisfaction. 4/

We tested this at the conversation level and at 1-minute intervals using a video-assisted recall procedure. Participants independently viewed and rated their conversation 1 minute at a time. 3/

Co-present smartphone use, but not an unused smartphone, was more dissatisfying for couples (compared to smartphone-absent interactions). 2/