ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Organizational Psychology
When Resilience Backfires: The Counterintuitive Effect of Employee Resilience in High-Tech Surveillance Environments
Jialu Chu 1,2
Hong Chu 2
1. School of Business, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macao, SAR China
2. Tianjin College, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing, China
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Abstract
The fast adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in workplaces is a serious paradox: optimization tools can negatively affect the mental health of employees. The research paper examines the two psychological mechanisms that connect AI exposure with well-being among managers in the manufacturing industry in China. Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework, we discuss how AI-based surveillance and AI-awareness have different effects on psychological well-being mediated by the parallel mediators of perceived autonomy and psychological distress, and how the relationships are moderated by employee resilience. The structural equation modeling was performed on data of a three-wave time-lagged survey of 482 managers. Findings affirm that surveillance negatively impacts psychological well-being by lowering autonomy and enhancing distress, and awareness does so through the same mechanisms. As opposed to the buffering hypothesis, resilience increased the positive relationship between surveillance and distress, and undermined the protective role of awareness on distress. These results indicate that resilience is a two-sided sword in high-control AI settings, i.e., the issue of its consistent value, as well as the necessity of context-specific application of AI and support systems.
Summary
Keywords
AI-Awareness, Artificial Intelligence (AI) surveillance, autonomy, Mental Health, psychological distress, psychological resilience
Received
19 January 2026
Accepted
20 February 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Chu and Chu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Hong Chu
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