Chief Change Officer
#351 Juliana Schroeder: AI, Power, and the Psychology of Human Connection
Tue, 6 May 2025
The way we communicate is changing—but what does that mean for the humans doing the talking?Dr. Juliana Schroeder, associate professor at UC Berkeley Haas, has spent her career unpacking how we perceive other minds—both human and machine. In this episode, she breaks down how AI isn’t just reshaping tech—it’s reshaping the psychology of communication itself. From virtual assistants to algorithmic bias, and from voice cues to power dynamics, Juliana offers a grounded look at what we gain (and risk losing) as AI enters our social and professional lives.For executives, educators, and anyone raising kids in a world of voice bots and Zoom calls, Juliana’s insights are both sobering and empowering: technology may evolve, but the need for mindful, human-centered interaction is here to stay.Key Highlights of Our Interview:The Mind Behind the Mind: Why She Studies Perception“Humans can’t read minds—but we act like we can. I study how we form beliefs about others’ thoughts and feelings—and where those beliefs go wrong.”From Hard Science to Human BehaviorA former physics student, Juliana fell in love with psychology’s messier questions: persuasion, power, and decision-making.Alexa, Am I in Charge?“When we treat virtual assistants like humans, we start to feel powerful. That shift can change how we act—sometimes for the worse.”The Confirmation Bias Trap of AI“LLMs like ChatGPT often reflect what we say, not what we need. They’re agreeable by design—and that creates a unique kind of echo chamber.”Medium Matters: Why Voice Beats Text“Text strips out nuance. Voice restores it. If you want to be seen as warm, competent, or persuasive—don’t rely on email.”Hiring, Algorithms, and the Need for Transparency“When high-stakes decisions get outsourced to black-box AI, people rebel. We still want a human in the loop.”Designing Better Conversations—With Humans and MachinesWhat if your AI pushed back? Juliana imagines future assistants with ‘sass’ to counteract human overconfidence.What Leaders Should (Still) Master“Great communicators don’t just speak—they switch modalities when needed. They know when to email, when to Zoom, and when to step away.”More Tech ≠ Better Talk“Too many tools can backfire. The best leaders know how to reduce distraction and amplify meaning—whether talking to humans or machines.”_________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Juliana Schroeder, PHD --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Juliana Schroeder and what does she study?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Coming to us from the halls of UC Berkeley is associate professor and psychologist, Juliana Schroeder.
You might have noticed most of our guests have taken quite the scenic route through their careers. Juliana, on the other hand, has kept her eyes on one prize, digging deep into the human mind. which is now leading the charge in teaching negotiation and management to both MBA students and seasoned executives.
Take a quick look at her website or UC Berkeley's, and you'll be blown away by her achievements. We are talking a laundry list of titles, a mountain of papers, and a substantial collection of awards. And get this, she's bagged not one, but two master's degrees and two PhDs at an age where many are still figuring things out.
I could easily spend a good 10 minutes here just running through her credentials bio and all the incredible things she's achieved. But let's be honest, I know you're here for the insights. So while I'm skipping the long intro to save us some time, I can't recommend enough diving into her profile yourself. Trust me, if you're even a bit of a nerd like me, Juliana's work is a gold mine.
Juliana and I met at Chicago Booth. She was my TA for two courses taught by two amazing professors and social psychologists, Nick Apley and Linda Ginzel. I still remember the first day we met, I was sitting next to her on the front row when the whole classroom was packed. I didn't know she was actually my TA. I raised hand and answered the question. I got the question wrong.
Then she whispered to me, trying to explain the reason why. Then we met again in Singapore. This time, I pulled her aside. asking her about reciprocity, a very important concept in psychology and negotiation. In my eyes, she is very sharp. Those who know me well understand that I use this word very selectively as a compliment. Over time, I've observed the growth of her academic career.
I told myself, I must invite her to my podcast. So, wish granted, here we are. Let's get started.
Good afternoon, Juliana. Thank you so much for having me, Vance. Good afternoon.
Let's start with a brief introduction of your background. For the benefit of the audience, how I met Juliana, that was when I was at Chicago Bull.
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Chapter 2: How does AI change our perception of power?
That might lead people to have this sense that they have maybe almost like an inflated sense of the part of it could be real. So we differentiate between the subjective and the objective sources of power. And we're really just more looking at people's subjective sense. So do they feel like they have power? And there's a long line of research that finds that when people feel like they have power,
hour, that puts them into more of a goal orientation. So they're more likely to act rapidly. They make quick decisions. They tend to be more instrumental and less relationship focused. They may be more overconfident in their decision making. So power can lead to this like inflated sense of self and changes the ways in which people behave in these systematic ways.
And most of that research had looked at real instantiations of power, like people having resources and people having other humans that were doing things for them. And we thought, well, maybe just like the feeling of being powerful with virtual assistants might lead to some of these consequences.
But we actually theorized that not just any interaction with the virtual assistant would make people necessarily feel powerful. We thought particularly if the virtual assistant was humanized. So if it was the case that people engage with a virtual assistant and see it as being somewhat human-like,
then perhaps they would show some of these consequences of power that they've become higher in their goal orientation and instrumentality. And so we did find that. And it's interesting to think even how we were considering humanization back then, because now
Of course, as you mentioned, there are so many more types of virtual agents that are out in the world, and they're not necessarily just assistants anymore either. Like, I don't know. So we haven't tested this in ChatGPT, for example. I don't know if people, when they engage with ChatGPT, they see it as being an assistant for them.
Or if they see it, I know a lot of people who would just anecdotally will say that when they engage with chat GPT, they try to be very respectful and very kind because you never know when the machine overlords are going to take over. You know, so they probably are seeing themselves as being more low power, right? I don't know like subjectively how that would work with certain virtual agents.
that are out in the world now, but I do know that if people see the virtual agent as an assistant, like they're there to serve you and they humanize it, then I think we would expect to see these results of goal orientation. Now, the humanization piece I mentioned is interesting too, because at the time we were thinking about humanization as being more about
For example, whether you interact with it as if it's like a human, like, does it talk to you? Can you talk back to it? As opposed to, you know, writing, does it have an avatar with it? Like, so would there be some sort of face that you can see? And now I think there's a lot more sophistication in terms of humanization. I think that even
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Chapter 3: What are the psychological effects of interacting with virtual assistants?
I would imagine if this is talking to a human colleague, I might be more careful in terms of the language I use. Am I saying any things that may upset you? But I still see it as a machine. And as of now, the emotional aspect of it is not so human yet. So that's why I don't see it just as an assistant. I would take it more like advisor, you know, depending on situation.
Yeah, I share your intuition that it might be a bit more nuanced with ChatGPT. I think when we wrote this article in 2020, we were envisioning a future in which people would just have like armies of virtual assistants, like maybe they're humanized like these robots. Your house is just filled with robots that are just there to serve you and they're very humanized.
And so we were like, what is this going to do to people's psychology and to their minds? And that vision of the future hasn't really played out yet. I guess it's still possible. Who knows? But I think you're right that I don't think people probably see Chachi BTS necessarily just being their servant per se.
If anything, you know, there's maybe more of a sense of uncertainty about like where the power dynamic really lies. in that relationship?
Well, if I structure the questions, I must say they give me some ideas as if I'm talking to a fairly intelligent person. And then we keep communicating. Then this kind of interaction or conversation sometimes, honestly, is more interesting. than talking to a human who may not have any sense of independent thinking.
I do see the value in terms of using the machine, a highly intelligent machine, and me as the human also being aware of what kind of biases that I may face if I use this tool. Just be aware of that, be mindful not to be distracted or get so carried away by that. So far, this conversation, this interaction for me is still manageable.
But then I watched a video posted by an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship from Chicago Bull. The topic is why AI may be your best astrologist. I know you work with and teach a lot of MBAs, executives. Do you see us, like people like us, decision-making, executive decision-making, perhaps AI could be one of our best astrologists?
Yeah, that's a great question.
By the way, while you were talking, I was just thinking about how it would be so interesting if one of the concerns potentially of having people feel like they're high power and they have all these virtual assistants that are working for them is that people that are sometimes in really high power positions can get this very inflated sense of self and they become overconfident and they make their decisions too quickly.
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Chapter 4: Why is voice communication more effective than text?
So after I send an email, I can get information about compared to most of the users in your organization, that was on the angrier side. Like your anger sentiment was high in that email. Oh, I should have toned that down or maybe I should tone it down in the next iteration. And so I can take that feedback and I can use that. Now, I do think there's a potential.
So you might just be tempted to say, oh, all of these tools sound great. Why not just employ all of them? Let's transcribe everything we're saying and let's use the sentiment analysis that exists. But there might be a cost on the back end to distraction. because humans are only capable of engaging in so much at once.
And I've talked to a couple of startups now that are building these new communication platforms that are basically everything. So there's words that are scrolling because it's everything being transcribed as we speak. We can see each other. We can hear each other. It's like all the modalities are happening at once. And like, again, on the one hand, that sounds kind of great.
But on the other hand, I think there might be a cost in terms of distraction. And as a teacher and an educator, I'm very, very aware of this and very salient to me, that trade-off. And so I do think people need to be wise in thinking about which communication tools they want to utilize and really pay attention to the new research coming out on this.
And so that's probably what I would like to leave people with.
Until next time, take care.
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