IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/prbchp/978-3-032-07163-7_3.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Outsourcing Judgment: Hidden Anxieties and the Rise of Cognitive Offloading in the Age of AI

Author

Listed:
  • Michael Gerlich

    (SBS Swiss Business School)

Abstract

This chapter explores how artificial intelligence (AI) influences cognitive engagement and public perception by synthesising findings from two empirical studies. The first investigates how anxieties about AI often remain unspoken in social contexts but surface in anonymous or reflective settings, highlighting the role of social desirability and professional conformity. The second study examines how frequent reliance on generative AI tools correlates with lower performance on structured critical thinking tasks, indicating a shift toward cognitive offloading. Rather than viewing these patterns as contradictory, the chapter interprets them as part of a broader socio-cognitive adaptation. It introduces the concept of the trust paradox to explain how individuals can simultaneously distrust AI and depend on it. The chapter argues for environments that preserve critical agency and support open reflection, positioning anxiety not as resistance but as a valuable diagnostic signal in navigating technological change.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael Gerlich, 2025. "Outsourcing Judgment: Hidden Anxieties and the Rise of Cognitive Offloading in the Age of AI," Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics,, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-032-07163-7_3
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-07163-7_3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:prbchp:978-3-032-07163-7_3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.