Field Note: What Do Psychographics Reveal About Resistance To AI Adoption?
- Chris McLellan
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Behavioural scientist Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, labelled the "office whisperer" by The New York Times, and author of The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work, on the fear, identity threat, and stigma that can stall AI inside organisations.
Quick Summary
Most AI pilots in the workplace never make it past the pilot stage, and Dr. Gleb Tsipursky says the reason has almost nothing to do with the technology, and everything to do with the underlying human psychographics:
AI is easy to learn compared to the software that came before it, so the usual change management playbook misses the real problem
Fear and anxiety about being replaced is the first source of resistance, and it is rarely addressed head on
Identity threat is the second, because AI writes the sales email or the marketing copy that people built their professional identity around
Quiet individual use is the third, where staff use AI but do not talk about it, so the productivity gain never reaches the company
Tsipursky's argument, captured in his book The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work, is that leaders are treating an emotional problem as a training problem, and that is why the returns are not showing up.
About Conbtributor
Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, called the "Office Whisperer" by The New York Times, is CEO of the future-of-work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts and the author of seven books.
His new peer-reviewed book, The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results (Georgetown University Press, 2026), draws on more than 100 consulting projects and thousands of survey responses.
The Psychographics of AI Adoption
A widely quoted 2025 study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that 95% of AI pilots fail to scale relative to the resources put into them. Tsipursky's explanation is that AI is not like the software leaders rolled out before it.
With a customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning system (ERP), the hard part was learning the tool. AI is easy to learn. The friction sits somewhere else, and change management was never built for it.
"Employees feel threatened by a tool that can write a great sales email ... because that strikes at the heart of who they are as professionals." - Dr. Gleb Tsipursky, in Field Note recorded with AskAI.org
Dr. Tsipursky sorts the resistance into three groups:
AI Alarmists
The AI alarmists are afraid of being replaced. Standard change management does not touch that fear.
Pragmatic Resistors
The pragmatic resistors feel identity threat. Nobody feels diminished by a new database. A tool that writes a strong sales email or good marketing copy is different, because it strikes at who they are as professionals.
Reluctant Adopters
The reluctant adopters already use AI and stay quiet about it. They feel stigmatised, so the productivity stays individual and never reaches the company.
Each group needs a different response. Reassurance does nothing for someone whose identity feels threatened, and training does nothing for someone already using the tool in private.
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