Currently reading Most & Clout (2026) on “Education As The Lighting Of A Fire: Personal Connection Strikes The Match”
I see statistics on social media every day about 1 in 3 young people who say that there are topics they talk about with an AI but not with another human. And almost all our students report that they use AI for learning, because they aren’t being judged, they don’t feel like they are bothering someone with stupid questions (which, in our trust study, was a big thing especially with teachers that were well-liked and respected, that students did not want to give them the feeling that there had been something wrong with their teaching, and that they therefore did not ask questions!). So what is the point in still having human teachers? (This is, of course, a rethorical question leading into the summary of an article. Do not worry!)
Most & Clout (2026) explore the question “What role does a perceived spark of personal connection play in driving people’s curiosity and desire to learn?” They build on other work that has previously shown that retention of facts is the same for groups that were taught by a recorded real lecturer and an avatar (both using the same slides and scripts). But learning is more than remembering facts. In their study, Most & Clout (2026) present all learners with the same audio recording and slides, but one group is told that this is a real person and they were given a backstory of that person (including two dogs, a goldfish, and pizza), and the other group was told that the lecture was AI generated, but verified by experts. They then tested participants’ understanding and retention, but also asked about their connection with the lecturer, if they would like to learn more from them, and about their motivation to learn more about the topic.
Turns out that students feel significantly more connection to the “human” lecturer and are more open to learning from them again than from the “AI” lecturer. Tests of understanding and retention came to very similar results in both conditions, as did participants’ motivation to continue learning about the topic. Also, “those who felt stronger personal connection with the lecturer were more eager to learn from that lecturer again regardless of topic and were more inspired to continue learning about the topic itself“. So in the end what mattered to learning was not whether they (thought they) were learning from AI or a person, but how strongly connected they felt with the person. As the authors write: “educational and societal aspirations are best fulfilled by igniting curiosity and excitement to learn more, empowering successive generations to identify and answer new questions.”
Most & Clout (2026) conclude that “In an era marked by increasing exploration of the potential scalability of education in the absence of human contact, this study spotlights the role of human connection in sparking learners’ motivation. Even when all else is held entirely constant, who we believe our teachers to be — and the degree to which we relate and feel personal connection to them — matters.”
Most, S. & Clout, N. (2026). Education As The Lighting Of A Fire: Personal Connection Strikes The Match. Personal connection & learning motivation. Preprint. https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/3n5d4_v1
Featured image and pics below from the ride to work on the day that I also got to play with rotating tank pictures again and thus forgot I had taken these…
There is water between the two window panes on the bus to work! Here, the bus is braking but the water is continuing the motion until it piles up high enough on the front edge of the “tank”…
At some point, the slope is too steep and the wave is going to run back
Sometimes there also nice waves running smoothly back and forth
Cool to see how there is always a spectrum of wavelengths
Now the bus had accelerated, the water piled up in the back, and now it’s rushing forward again
Same here
Sometimes there are lots of small waves riding on the bigger one!
This was the most fun bus ride in a long time!
