AI Dependence and Self-Reported Creativity Among Chinese College Students: The Roles of Motivation for AI Use and Perceived AI Literacy
Jie Hou, Yanhong Huang, Qing Wang, Xiaoxue Yao, Peizheng Zhang, Fengqing Zhao, Qingqi Liu · 2026
Read AI Dependence and Self-Reported Creativity Among Chinese College Students: The Roles of Motivation for AI Use and Perceived AI Literacy by Jie Hou, Yanhong Huang, Qing Wang, Xiaoxue Yao, Peizheng Zhang, Fengqing Zhao, Qingqi Liu (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13603993.txt.
Description
Jie Hou leads a seven-author team surveying 5,764 Chinese college students about leaning on artificial intelligence and their sense of their own creativity. Dependence differs from ordinary use: it means habitually handing pressure and hard thinking to the tool. Their questionnaire measured dependence, self-reported creativity, four motives for using AI, and AI literacy.
Dependence tracked with lower self-reported creativity overall. The pathways split by motive in opposing directions. Dependence running through escape or social motivation dragged creativity down. Dependence running through instrumental or entertainment motivation lifted it. Feeling AI-literate changed how dependence fed the escape, social, and entertainment motives, but not the instrumental one or the direct creativity link. The authors argue that why students reach for AI matters as much as how much, which gives educators a finer target than simple screen-time rules.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Jie Hou, Yanhong Huang, Qing Wang, Xiaoxue Yao, Peizheng Zhang, Fengqing Zhao, Qingqi Liu |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 54 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |