Too Useful to Avoid, Too Uneasy to Accept: Cognitive Dissonance Among Language Majors in the GenAI Era

Abstract

This study examined the formation and regulation of cognitive dissonance among 30 undergraduates majoring in English, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese through semi-structured interviews and grounded theory analysis. The findings identified Cognitive Dissonance as the core category, four dissonance-generating categories—Competence Development Disconnect, Ethical-Normative Conflict, Devaluation of Language Majors, and Educational Inertia—and one regulation-related category, Dissonance Regulation. A square-pyramid model was developed to explain the process from dissonance generation to regulation. The study shows that students’ GenAI use cannot be understood as simple acceptance or rejection, but as conflicts among beliefs, emotions, values, and behaviors around AI and language learning. It also raises concerns that early or excessive AI use may reduce opportunities for sustained practice and language competence development. This study extends the application of cognitive dissonance theory to AI-mediated language education and offers implications for language programs to strengthen AI literacy, ethical guidance, human–AI collaboration, and competence-oriented assessment.