Parechoia - Why We Say "Thank You" To Chatbots
Ancient wiring flags inbound attention, real or not. Here's how it works.
The Reflex
A few years back, a video made the viral rounds on the internet of a red panda exhibiting its startle reflex when it encountered an apparently unexpected rock as it exited its den at the zoo. It’s an incredibly cute video, worth a few seconds of your time. The panda stands on its hind legs, throwing its arms in the air in an effort to look larger and intimidate the rock, which predictably doesn’t react.
Earlier this year (April 2025), a question posed by @tomieinlove on X.com made the news: “I wonder how much money OpenAI has lost in electricity costs from people saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to their models.” OpenAI’s Sam Altman himself replied: “tens of millions of dollars well spent--you never know.”
What do these two things have in common? I’ve found myself reflexively saying thank you to ChatGPT, muttering “Come on, you can do it” to a slow computer, hammering a thumb impatiently on a crosswalk button waiting for the light to change, or swearing at a sideways wind blowing rain into my face when I’m walking. You’ve likely found yourself doing similar things.
I’m not a red panda. I know how computers and LLMs work. I am aware that there’s no reason a crosswalk signal will respond to repeated button presses unless it’s programmed to do so. I don’t believe wind spirits exist who care if I swear at them for blowing raindrops into my eyes. But I still share the same reflex as the panda, reacting as if there’s something there that can respond to my actions. And Sam Altman’s half-jesting hedge — “you never know” — exhibits the same reflex; he knows perfectly well that LLMs are statistical completion machines and that there’s no reason to think ChatGPT cares about pleases or thank yous, and yet…you never know. The reflex makes it feel better to be safe than sorry — both for us and for the red panda.
Parechoia Defined
I call this reflex “parechoia” (pa-reh-KOY-uh), a linguistic twist on pareidolia, but for attention: Greek para + echo + ia. Basically, we see our attention echoed back at us and we reflexively reciprocate just because “you never know.”
[Language geek moment: “Echo” here is a mnemonic pun; we usually think of ἠχώ (ēkhō, “echo/sound”), but it’s also linked to προσέχω / προσοχή (prosékho / prosochē, “to attend/attention”), from ἔχω (ékhō, “to have/hold”).]
When our brains perceive uncertainty as to whether or not something is paying attention to us, the reflex triggers. It’s primal and cross-species — an evolutionarily cheap bias that persists even when we know we’re interacting with inanimate objects. It’s a reflex, not a choice, after all.
Parechoia — seeing attention directed back at us — is distinct from agency detection (seeing potential intent in the environment) and from pareidolia (seeing faces in clouds). They strengthen each other when they co-occur, but they’re independent reflexes. If you feel watched, you will look for an agent and a face. If you see a face, you may test to see if it’s moving and if it’s looking at you. And if you see something moving with apparent intent in your direction, you’ll look for a face and try to determine whether it is, in fact, fixed on you.
The Triggers
I think there are at least three primary triggers for the parechoic reflex: contingency, timing, and coherence. All of them can be triggered by design, coincidence, or intent on the part of an actual agent like an animal or a person. Frequently, more than one of them will trigger together, enhancing the effect.
Contingency: This trigger is activated when we feel that our environment is responding directly to us. It’s a sort of call and response. You might experience it when you address a smartphone assistant or a smart speaker by name and it responds. You tell the rain to “leave you alone” and it dies down. An animal freezes when you look, and moves again when you look away. The rustle in the bushes stops when you do, and starts again when you step forward. All of these suggest something is paying attention to you.
Timing: This is triggered when there is a short delay between our action and an expected reaction. This delay must be long enough to feel potentially intentional rather than automatic and not so long that it causes frustration or loss of interest. At the sweet spot, you feel like your action was observed and considered by the environment. If you shout on a snowy mountainside and hear an avalanche a moment later, it feels like the mountain has replied. An automatic door opening a beat too late can feel personal, like it should have noticed you but didn’t. If you walk into a dark room and notice a shadow looming over you a heartbeat later, your heart might skip another beat or two before you realize it’s just a coat you forgot you left on a door hook.
Coherence: We get a coherence trigger when the environment suggests it is paying attention to us specifically somehow. For example, seeing what appears to be the same rock, the same shadow, or the same number wherever you go can feel as if someone or something is tracking you, following you, or trying to tell you something. Computers and smart devices trigger this too; they remember your preferences and settings and automatically reconfigure themselves accordingly.
In all of these cases, there is no requirement that there is a real agent or intent behind the phenomenon. Parechoia fires on uncertainty; whether an animal is stalking us or we’re simply observing coincidental instances of a number in the environment (superstitions), the safe bet is to respond as if there’s attention focused on us.
The strongest effect occurs when all three triggers are hit simultaneously. If you see an animal mirroring your movements, maybe with a small delay, disappearing and reappearing at different locations, you’ll be reasonably sure it’s paying attention to you specifically — possibly because it’s hungry. Human interactions hit all three triggers intensely, of course: we take turns in conversations; we literally mirror each other’s movements; and we act and reply in ways that make it clear that we have been paying attention to each other’s actions or preferences and are reciprocating.
What’s The Purpose?
Like pareidolia and agency detection, parechoia is evolutionarily adaptive. Detecting a face, an agent, or incoming attention are all cheaper in survival terms than failing to detect them. Parechoia is also socially adaptive; it’s cheaper to assume another social actor — a friend, an enemy, a predator, or your prey — is paying attention to you than to fail to detect that they are. Failure means risk: alienating an ally, being victimized, or losing or becoming a meal. A false positive just means you look silly or overattentive, assuming anyone is actually paying attention in the first place.
We learn through interactions with our environment that many things which trigger these reflexes are, in fact, inert and do not actually pay attention to us or respond; they’re just inanimate objects or machines. We even train ourselves to try to ignore the parechoic reflex in most cases. While the question of how precisely parechoia is architected (through dedicated neural circuits or emerging from interactions between existing systems) is an open one, it appears to operate like other pre-conscious reflexes. Ultimately, it’s faster than our conscious rationalization, especially when we’re tired and mentally overloaded.
This is why we stand at the crosswalk, hammering the button and waiting impatiently for it to do its job. We know it’s just some circuits and a timer (hopefully not just a placebo button wired to nothing at all!), but the reflex is there waiting for us. We’ve learned to expect contingency because the light does change, and the delay tells primitive neural architecture that there may be something behind the button listening while we say, “Come on, change already!”
Parechoia in the 21st Century
For most of human history, we’ve experienced the parechoic reflex primarily through contingent, timed, and coherent interactions with the natural environment and other actors (humans, animals, etc.). Even before computing, technological advances have sometimes aimed to trigger the reflex (e.g., automata like the famous Mechanical Turk) and the initial public reaction to technology has often been shaped by parechoic reflexes — unsettled reactions to disembodied voices in telephones, ghostly music from phonographs, or fourth-wall breaks from moving images of people in cinema, for example.
Early technology was not able to reliably produce intense “triple trigger” parechoia at scale. The Mechanical Turk responded to chess moves like a human because it had a human operating it, but it was expensive and contextually limited. Fortune tellers and oracles would respond to your questions after pregnant pauses as if they “knew” things that could only be conveyed through an outside spiritual third party. These were personal, small-scale, and relatively labor-intensive technologies.
20th-century computing technology brought the possibility of embedding cheap and ubiquitous responsiveness into the everyday environment itself. Suddenly the doors to a supermarket or a theater could open themselves on your approach. Lights could turn themselves on when you moved. You could remotely control a toy car or a video game character. A device could remember your preferences or even perform an action for you like recording your favorite show. Basic OCR and voice recognition technology could actually convert your handwriting or speech into documents just like a personal secretary. And primitive AI-like software such as ELIZA seemed to be responding to you, but struggled with coherence, unable to remember the subject of a conversation and relying on simple tricks to keep it going.
(It’s worth noting two things about ELIZA: 1) the ELIZA effect was real — people were already acting as if ELIZA might have feelings; and 2) ELIZA outputs were originally on teletype, which enforced a small delay even if the result of an input would have been computed near-instantly, though its designers only commented that the delays were not “intolerable”).
The 21st century has for the first time in recorded human history brought us technologies that are increasingly parechoically indistinguishable from humans, with extremely powerful triple parechoic triggers. Voice assistants like Siri and Alexa crossed the threshold first, followed quickly by ChatGPT and other large language models. These technologies respond contingently, with human-like timing, and with coherence and memory that can feel on par with humans. They are extremely powerful parechoic stimulators; they provoke feelings of connection, of being seen, and of owing reciprocity — this is why we say “please” and “thank you” to chatbots. We generally agree that chatbots do not yet have agency; they don’t initiate conversations independently or decide to become astronauts without prompting. But in most other respects, they appear to have and to allocate attention just like we do, even when we “know” they do not.
The push to ever-more-potent parechoic stimulation over the last century or two on the part of companies and platforms seems like a natural evolution. More parechoia means more natural engagement; we feel as if we are seen and as if our contributions are appreciated and valued. The “dark side” is frequently cited as unhealthy dependencies or time spent on parechoically powerful technologies like social media platforms and games.
The more technology can stimulate parechoic triggers — perfect responsiveness, enough delay to feel human, and presenting social awareness of us — the stronger the parechoic reflex and the more difficult it becomes for us to suppress reacting as if the trigger deserves reciprocal behavior. From this perspective, strong reactions to and even the development of parasocial relationships with parechoically “complete” technologies is fully expected. How desirable these reactions are is a question of norms, values, and policy.
What’s Next?
Whether you’re a red panda trying to intimidate a rock or me saying “thanks” to ChatGPT, the parechoic reflex makes sense. It’s kept us alive and socially responsive for evolutionary timescales. As we move into an era of full-blown and potentially fully autonomous AI systems — perhaps even merging them with physical embodiments to create humanoid androids — the parechoic triggers will only get stronger.
This ancient architecture offers a few levers for intentional design across devices, infrastructure, and institutions. If we want people to pay more attention to technology and to potentially form social relationships with it, then personalized contingency with a touch of delay will create extended engagement and tighter ties. If we want technology to fade into the background and avoid drawing attention to itself, then instant, generic, and automated impersonal functionality serves that purpose better.
We’re as subject to the reflex as our panda is, but seeing it explicitly pointed out can help us understand why we react the way we do. Thanking a chatbot, silly as it may feel, isn’t irrational; your brain is just protecting you from making a potentially expensive social mistake. The red panda was right to try to intimidate the rock, and we’re right to thank chatbots — after all, you never know.
Have a question, comment, or criticism? Reply to the email or send me a DM here on Substack and I’ll do my best to get back to you!