The book’s way of organizing the problem by how much context an assistant has: an answer, a conversation, individual history, and institutional decisions.
The scopes overlap; they are not a ranking of severity or stages everyone passes through. One agreeable answer about a consequential decision can matter more than years of harmless encouragement. The forms of sycophancy describe how the accommodation happens; the scopes describe the context it happens in.
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Definition from The World That Agrees With You: Understanding and Managing Sycophancy in the Age of AI, by Timothy O’Brien. © 2026 Timothy O’Brien. All rights reserved.
See also
- SycophancyAgreement that follows your preference more closely than the evidence warrants. Praise optional.
- Forms of sycophancyPraise, endorsement, omission, emphasis, invented criticism — five ways an assessment follows a verdict.
- Institutional sycophancyWarnings that fail to reach the people approving the decision.