The emotional cost of AI chatbots in education: Who benefits and who struggles?

Recent advancements in large language models have enabled the development of advanced chatbots, offering new opportunities for personalized learning and academic support that could transform the way students learn. Despite their growing popularity and promising benefits, there is limited understanding of the psychological impact. Accordingly, this study examined the effects of chatbot usage on students' positive and negative affect and considered the moderating role of familiarity. Using a pre-post control group design, undergraduate students were divided into two groups to completed an assignment. Groups received the same task, and only differed based on receiving instruction to use or not to use an AI chatbot. Students who used a chatbot reported significantly lower positive affect, with no significant difference in negative affect. Importantly, familiarity with chatbots moderated changes in positive affect such that students with more familiarity with chatbots reported fewer declines. These findings showcase chatbots’ duplicitous effects. While the tools may prove empowering with effective use, they can also decrease the positive aspects of completing assignments for those with less familiarity. These findings underscore the behavioral complexity of AI integration by highlighting how familiarity moderates affective outcomes and how chatbot use may reduce positive emotional engagement without increasing negative affect. Integrating AI tools in education requires not just access and training, but a nuanced understanding of how student behavior and emotional well-being are shaped by their interaction with intelligent systems.