Human-AI Interactions: Cognitive, Behavioral, and Emotional Impacts
It addresses the problem of balancing AI benefits with human-centric risks for researchers and designers, but it is incremental as a survey paper.
This paper surveys the cognitive, behavioral, and emotional impacts of human-AI interactions, finding that AI can enhance memory, creativity, and engagement but also introduces risks like diminished critical thinking, skill erosion, and increased anxiety.
As stories of human-AI interactions continue to be highlighted in the news and research platforms, the challenges are becoming more pronounced, including potential risks of overreliance, cognitive offloading, social and emotional manipulation, and the nuanced degradation of human agency and judgment. This paper surveys recent research on these issues through the lens of the psychological triad: cognition, behavior, and emotion. Observations seem to suggest that while AI can substantially enhance memory, creativity, and engagement, it also introduces risks such as diminished critical thinking, skill erosion, and increased anxiety. Emotional outcomes are similarly mixed, with AI systems showing promise for support and stress reduction, but raising concerns about dependency, inappropriate attachments, and ethical oversight. This paper aims to underscore the need for responsible and context-aware AI design, highlighting gaps for longitudinal research and grounded evaluation frameworks to balance benefits with emerging human-centric risks.