Differential Gratitude Expression
The pattern in which some users express gratitude toward an AI more freely than toward people, attributed to the absence of social-evaluation concern in the AI exchange. The referent is the relative difference in expressed gratitude between AI-directed and human-directed communication.
Operational Definition
RATIO. Numerator: frequency or rated intensity of gratitude expressions a user directs at an AI system. Denominator: the same measure for the user's human-directed communication over a comparable period. The paradox is indicated when the AI-directed value meaningfully exceeds the human-directed value for a user.
Measurement Schema
Proposed measurement protocol (not yet empirically validated): Comparative gratitude-expression measurement: gratitude acts are detected and intensity-rated in matched AI-directed and human-directed message samples per participant (coded by raters, optionally aided by a validated gratitude-lexicon classifier). Could be reported as the within-person AI-to-human gratitude ratio and tested against parity (ratio of 1) with a paired comparison; coder intensity-rating reliability via ICC and detection reliability via Cohen's kappa.