The researchers anchor their analysis in a striking natural experiment: the Coca-Cola Company, one of the world’s most recognizable advertisers, has produced two high-profile AI initiatives that met dramatically different fates. The first, the 2023 Create Real Magic platform, invited digital artists and fans to generate their own artwork using the company’s iconic logo through AI image generation. The platform was broadly embraced and enjoyed by consumers. The second, the company’s 2025 AI-generated “Holidays Are Coming” holiday commercial, was met with ridicule on social media and widespread customer criticism, with Forbes reporting on the backlash that erupted when the ad was released.

The difference between these two outcomes, Choi and Magee argue, lies in whether consumers can easily understand why the advertiser used AI in the first place. Create Real Magic offered something that would be difficult, if not impossible, to deliver without the technology: thousands of unique, personalized art pieces created by individual fans around the world. Producing that volume of bespoke creative work through human designers alone would have been impractical. In that context, AI was not a substitute for human creativity but an enabler of an experience that could not otherwise exist. Consumers, the researchers said, could readily grasp the purpose of the technology, and that transparency of purpose defused suspicion.

By contrast, the 2025 holiday commercial used AI to produce animation that human designers could plausibly have created themselves. When AI is deployed unnecessarily, the study finds, consumers can feel upset or unnerved, and in the case of the holiday ad those feelings spilled over into public ridicule. One YouTube commenter delivered a particularly cutting verdict, calling the spot “the most profitable commercial in Pepsi’s history” — a joke that cut to the heart of the problem, framing the ad as a self-inflicted wound. The researchers point to this reaction as evidence that audiences are not simply hostile to AI; they are hostile to AI that appears to replace human effort without offering anything new in return.

Part of the negative response, Magee explained, stems from a well-documented psychological phenomenon known as the uncanny valley effect, in which a machine or depiction that is almost, but not quite, human induces feelings of unease in observers. “We’re basically programmed to look at everything, whether humans or objects, and make snap judgments about them,” Magee said. “We make these quick decisions, but then our conscious mind reflects and thinks, ‘Machines do not feel, but this machine is telling me that it does.'” According to Magee, that is where the conflict originates: when something is almost human but not quite, the brain’s rapid social-cognitive machinery and its reflective reasoning pull in opposite directions, producing the discomfort that audiences experience as eeriness or distrust.

The uncanny valley becomes especially hazardous, the researchers said, when advertisers use AI to try to engender genuine emotion. A generated depiction of a hurt or hungry child, for example, can leave consumers feeling tricked, because the emotional appeal is being manufactured by a system that has no stake in the suffering it portrays. Magee emphasized that marketers need to be very careful to remind people that they are an organization of people, not just a brand and not just a company. “It’s easy to think of an organization as something impersonal, and to counteract that, you need to underline the human aspect,” he said. “For any organization, whether it’s for-profit or nonprofit, the problem comes when something they’ve created feels artificial or contrived. AI can be another instantiation of that disconnect.”

Even when the uncanny valley effect is not in play, the study identifies a second, more strategic pitfall: consumers can still perceive that marketers have taken a “shortcut” by using AI, substituting a cheaper production method for genuine creative effort. Choi describes the remedy as what the researchers call the AI-ad theme match. “A strong match is when AI is an important part of how the campaign works, like if the intention is to give each consumer a personal experience that would otherwise be impossible,” he said. “In that case, AI is not just a cheaper production tool; it’s an important part of the creative idea.” The distinction is subtle but consequential: when the technology is woven into the conceptual core of a campaign, its use feels purposeful; when it is bolted onto a conventional ad, it reads as cost-cutting at the audience’s expense.

This framework leads to practical guidance that Choi believes many marketers are currently ignoring. “Nowadays, many marketers are just saying, ‘Hey, why don’t we use AI?’ but I don’t recommend that,” he said. “Marketers should start with the campaign idea first, and ask ‘Is AI necessary?’ It’s a simple question. If the answer is yes, the reason why should be clearly understood.” In other words, the creative brief should precede the technology decision, not follow it. If AI is essential to delivering the campaign’s promise — personalization at scale, interactivity, or capabilities beyond human production — then its presence is justified and legible to consumers. If it is not, the study suggests, advertisers risk paying a reputational price for a tool that added nothing the audience values.

The researchers also caution against assuming that today’s consumer sensitivities are permanent. Magee noted that the extent to which people feel negatively about AI in advertising may shift as the technology becomes more widespread and familiar. “Right now, because AI is new, it’s better to err on the side of being careful,” he said. “But norms change. You don’t see as many people thinking about CGI in movies anymore. No one gets upset about it like they used to.” The trajectory of computer-generated imagery in film offers a useful analogy: a technique that once provoked complaints about authenticity gradually became an invisible, accepted part of visual storytelling as audiences learned its conventions and creators learned its limits. “Over time, the norms will probably change, and we’ll accept AI just like we accepted CGI, animation and other new technologies,” Magee said.

For an advertising industry racing to incorporate generative tools into everything from holiday spots to interactive platforms, the study’s central message is a tempering one. The technology’s power to create realistic depictions of just about anything does not mean advertisers should lean on it reflexively. Consumer reactions, the research suggests, hinge on a judgment audiences make quickly and intuitively: whether the machine was used to give them something genuinely new, or simply to do cheaply what a person could have done better. Advertisers who can answer that question convincingly — by matching AI to the intent and theme of the campaign — are far more likely to land on the side of Create Real Magic than on the side of a holiday commercial that handed its rival an accidental victory lap.

Subject of Research: Consumer reactions to AI-generated advertising and the match between AI use and ad campaign themes

Article Title: Study explores why some AI ads fail while others succeed

Article References: Study explores why some AI ads fail while others succeed. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: artificial intelligence, advertising, consumer behavior, uncanny valley, Coca-Cola, marketing, Journal of Interactive Advertising, AI-generated ads, integrated marketing communications, CGI, brand backlash, University of Mississippi

The research, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, was led by doctoral candidate Ky Bray and assistant professor of psychology Laura Drislane. Rather than treating psychopathy as a single, monolithic label, the team anchored their work in the Triarchic Model of Psychopathy, an influential framework that decomposes the construct into three dimensions: boldness, meanness and disinhibition. This model, widely used in contemporary assessment, holds that these traits can influence everyday actions and behaviors, including the way a person talks about themselves, their past and their relationships with others.

To capture those linguistic traces, the researchers recruited a mixed sample of 450 participants, including college students and people who reported prior incarceration. Participants were first asked to respond to open-ended questions about the high points, low points and turning points of their lives, producing rich autobiographical narratives. They then completed a survey measuring their psychopathic traits. This design allowed the researchers to compare what people wrote with how they scored on each of the three triarchic dimensions, rather than relying on a single global psychopathy score.

The essays were processed with text-analysis software that counted how often participants used words belonging to psychologically meaningful categories, such as positive tone, negative tone, achievement, clout and risk. This computational approach, common in contemporary language-and-personality research, treats word choice as a measurable behavioral signal. Because the narrative prompts were emotionally charged, the resulting word frequencies offered a window into how people construct meaning from their own experiences, a process psychologists call meaning-making.

The results revealed sharply different linguistic profiles for each trait. Participants scoring higher in disinhibition were more likely to use negative words and less likely to reference friends, use positive language or invoke words related to achievement. Disinhibition, in the triarchic framework, reflects poor impulse control and a tendency toward erratic, unrestrained behavior, and the language patterns of high scorers appeared to mirror that instability, with narratives weighted toward negative affect and away from social connection and accomplishment.

Higher meanness, by contrast, was associated with a more positive tone and more achievement- and reward-related language, alongside less negative emotional language. Meanness captures callousness, cruelty and a lack of empathy, and the finding that high scorers leaned toward upbeat, success-oriented vocabulary suggests a style of self-presentation that emphasizes gain rather than distress. The most striking dissociation involved boldness, the trait most closely tied to social dominance and fearlessness: people scoring higher in boldness used fewer words related to anxiety, such as fear, afraid or worry, and made fewer references to mental illness.

Crucially, the associations between word choice and trait depended on which narrative question participants were answering. The same individual might produce different linguistic patterns when describing a life high point than when recounting a turning point. This context-dependence is one of the study’s most important contributions, because it directly contradicts the popular image of psychopathic language as uniformly hollow or lacking in emotion. Instead, the researchers argue, psychopathic language is trait-dependent and context-dependent, shifting with the demands of the narrative and the dimension of psychopathy involved.

That nuance matters for how scientists and clinicians understand the condition. As Bray emphasized, people tend to think of psychopathy as one thing, but it is actually multidimensional, and everyone exists on this spectrum, with some degree of meanness, boldness and disinhibition. Viewing the construct from a multidimensional perspective allows researchers to observe how these traits manifest in nonforensic populations, in people who have never committed a crime, and to see how they shape the lives of college students, business professionals and interpersonal relationships more broadly.

The spectrum view also underpins a broader movement away from calling people psychopaths, since the field increasingly treats psychopathy as a set of continuous dimensions rather than a diagnostic category. Yet those dimensions are far from trivial. Drislane noted that psychopathic dimensions can predict important outcomes, including crime, recidivism and intimate partner violence. What the research program suggests, she said, is that it is important to look beyond the label and into the different components of psychopathy, because each dimension carries a unique set of outcomes it can predict.

The ultimate ambition of the work is applied as well as descriptive. Like many mental health conditions, psychopathy can be treated to minimize its symptoms, and Drislane argued that if researchers want to treat or ideally even prevent psychopathy from developing, they need to understand the mechanisms at play, which comes down to understanding the unique contributors to all three dimensions. Language, the study suggests, is one such window: the stories people tell about their lives help them make sense of their experiences, develop a worldview and build a coherent sense of identity, and in psychopathy there are traits that relate to measurable differences in that meaning-making process. The goal, Bray stressed, is not to diagnose psychopathy from speech alone, but to recognize that psychopathy shows up in everyday behaviors, even subtle ones like the words we choose.

Subject of Research: Linguistic markers of the triarchic dimensions of psychopathy in autobiographical narratives

Article Title: Researchers study how psychopathic traits shape language

Article References: Researchers study how psychopathic traits shape language. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: psychopathy, Triarchic Model, language use, text analysis, boldness, meanness, disinhibition, Personality and Individual Differences, autobiographical narratives, meaning-making, University of Mississippi, personality traits

The study, led by Taylor Rodriguez, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Mississippi, and Allie Bond, assistant professor in the Rutgers Department of Urban-Global Public Health, surveyed 78 student-athletes drawn from NCAA Division I, Division II and Division III universities. By spanning all three competitive tiers, the researchers captured perspectives from athletes in large, resource-rich athletic programs as well as those at smaller institutions where mental health staffing may be thinner. The survey asked participants about suicidal thoughts and about their views on prevention strategies, including whether such training should be compulsory. According to the researchers, no previous survey had directly asked student-athletes whether they believe suicide prevention training should be mandatory, even though earlier studies have established that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among NCAA athletes.

The answer to that previously unasked question was, in the researchers’ words, an overwhelming yes. Rodriguez suggested that the athletes’ strong desire for education may be rooted in personal experience. Since nearly 40 percent of respondents had experienced suicidal thoughts themselves, she noted, the demand for information may stem from having faced difficulties without adequate tools to navigate them. In her view, if the NCAA recognized these common struggles by requiring athletes to learn about suicide and mental health, it could help athletes feel more supported and more comfortable reaching out for help when they need it.

Bond, herself a former student-athlete, framed the results as a direct message from the athletes to the people and institutions responsible for their welfare. Student-athletes are saying they are struggling and that they want resources, she said, and if clinicians, researchers and communities continue not to provide that support and not to address their struggles, they are failing to meet athletes’ needs. Her comments underscore a central tension in collegiate athletics: the same institutions that celebrate athletes’ physical performance often lack systematic mechanisms for identifying and responding to psychological distress.

Part of what makes college athletes a distinct population, the researchers argue, is the cluster of stressors unique to collegiate sports. Athletes must juggle expectations from coaches and fans, navigate demanding travel schedules, and contend with the constant possibility that an injury or a dip in performance could cost them their athletic scholarship or their name, image and likeness deals, the commercial arrangements that now allow college players to earn money from their personal brands. Unlike other students, an athlete’s academic and financial stability can hinge on what happens on the field, adding a high-stakes performance pressure that few campus peers experience.

To these familiar pressures, a newer and rapidly growing stressor has been added: legalized mobile sports betting. The NCAA has reported that one in three high-profile student-athletes has received threats or abusive messages from someone with a betting interest in their performance. Bond described the dynamic in blunt terms: a wide receiver misses a pass, someone loses money, and suddenly that student is being attacked on social media. She emphasized that these are 19- and 20-year-old kids, and questioned how they are being equipped to respond to that hate while still trying to pass classes and succeed academically. The convergence of gambling-driven harassment with existing performance pressures illustrates how the mental health landscape for college athletes has shifted in recent years, and why the researchers believe prevention programs must be designed around athletes’ actual circumstances rather than generic student populations.

The survey also revealed a telling pattern in how athletes seek help. Most student respondents said they would turn to teammates about mental health concerns before approaching counselors, psychologists or even their coaches. Bond said this preference makes sense, because people generally feel more comfortable talking to those who walk a similar path in life and can understand their experiences. But she warned that this reliance on peer networks carries an implication that athletic programs cannot ignore: if athletes are most likely to confide in one another, then teams themselves must be given the tools to respond to crises, and teammates must have the opportunity to follow up after an initial conversation.

That insight shapes one of the study’s most important practical conclusions. Bond argued that a one-time training session is going to have a really hard time moving the needle on stigma. Instead, she said, the cultural norms within athletic departments need to change so that mental well-being is promoted continuously while supporting a high-risk group. In other words, the goal is not merely to deliver information once per season but to embed mental health literacy into the everyday fabric of team life, making conversations about suicide and psychological distress as routine as conversations about physical injury and recovery.

Rodriguez echoed that vision, stating that student-athletes want and need more suicide prevention information while in college, and that it is important to learn how to better support them and ensure that athletics programs and universities are openly discussing suicide and mental health. Teaching athletes about available resources and making those resources readily accessible may be one important step toward that goal, she said. The researchers’ recommendations point toward mandatory, sustained training that accounts for the realities of collegiate sport, including scholarship insecurity, name, image and likeness pressures, travel demands, coach and fan expectations, and the harassment linked to sports betting.

The stakes of inaction are difficult to overstate. With suicide ranking as the second-leading cause of death among NCAA athletes, and with nearly four in ten surveyed athletes reporting lifetime suicidal thoughts, the study suggests that mental health risk in collegiate athletics is not an edge case but a widespread experience. At the same time, the near-universal support for mandatory training among respondents indicates that athletes are not resistant to intervention; they are actively requesting it. The researchers hope their findings will prompt the NCAA and its member institutions to treat suicide prevention education not as an optional enhancement but as a core component of athlete welfare, one that gives young athletes the information, resources and cultural permission to seek help before a crisis unfolds.

Subject of Research: Suicide risk and help-seeking behavior among United States collegiate student-athletes

Article Title: Student-athletes report need for suicide prevention, training

Article References: Student-athletes report need for suicide prevention, training. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: student-athletes, suicide prevention, NCAA, mental health, Behavioral Sciences, University of Mississippi, Rutgers University, sports betting, help-seeking behavior, collegiate athletics, mandatory training, NIL deals