The Hidden Psychological Cost of Educational AI: Associations Between AI Involvement, Teachers’ Pride, and Meaningfulness at Work

The proliferation of generative AI tools in educational settings raises a fundamental but underexplored question: does delegating creative teaching tasks to AI erode the psychological rewards that make teaching meaningful? In the current research, we advance a dual-level framework distinguishing the immediate emotional costs of AI involvement at the task level from its broader costs at the career level. We tested this framework across two complementary studies. Study 1 was a randomized experiment (N = 101 high school teachers) where participants either designed a classroom activity independently or revised an AI-generated draft. Teachers who revised the AI-generated draft reported lower psychological ownership of the product, which partially accounted for their lower state pride; this indirect effect was stronger among teachers with stronger callings. Study 2 was a two-wave time-lagged field survey (N = 231 university teachers) examining habitual AI involvement and career calling at Time 1 and psychological ownership and work meaningfulness one month later. AI involvement was indirectly associated with lower work meaningfulness through lower psychological ownership, with the indirect effect stronger among teachers with stronger callings. Together, the two studies provide experimental (Study 1) and time-lagged correlational (Study 2) evidence that AI involvement is associated with lower psychological ownership, which in turn is linked to lower pride in a specific task and lower meaningfulness of work as a whole. These associations were stronger among teachers with stronger callings, suggesting an ironic vulnerability that warrants attention in educational AI policy, teacher professional development, and AI system design.