Anticipating AI Revolution: How Future Narratives Corrupt Present Morals

This study investigates the psychological impact of anticipating a socially transformative future driven by artificial intelligence (AI). While global debates focus on the material consequences of AI deployment, the preemptive effects of its societal imaginary remain underexplored. We hypothesize that exposure to narratives of a revolutionary AI future induces structural uncertainty about prevailing social and moral norms, which in turn fosters moral disengagement and opportunistic, self-serving behavior. This hypothesis was tested through two lab-in-field experiments conducted in Goma and Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (N=105 and N=180, respectively). Participants were randomly assigned to a treatment group, primed with the revolutionary capabilities of AI, or a control group. Unethical behavior was measured using a coin-flip task with a financial incentive for dishonesty, and moral disengagement was assessed with a validated, context-specific scale. The results consistently show that the AI-primed group reported a statistically significant higher proportion of advantageous outcomes in the coin-flip task, indicating increased dishonesty (Hypothesis 1 supported). This group also scored significantly higher on the moral disengagement scale (Hypothesis 2 supported). However, mediation analyses revealed that moral disengagement did not account for the increase in dishonest behavior, suggesting a direct link between the anticipation of an AI revolution and unethical acts (Hypothesis 3 rejected). These findings demonstrate that AI's societal influence is not merely technological but also profoundly psychological, capable of eroding moral conduct through anticipatory narratives alone.