Why Leaders Are Trading Resilience for Quick Fixes: The Human-AI Marshmallow Test [Part 1]

As a business psychologist connecting the emerging field of cyberpsychology with leadership, my job is to connect the dots faster than others and predict the positive and negative outcomes for leaders. Today, my focus is on a critical fact: easy access to general LLMs provokes people to search for answers that a simple AI can’t give, even if the algorithm is programmed.

What humans see and experience as “Personal Development” is actually a magnified voice and false patterns with the ambition to tell them the ultimate truth about themselves. I am developing a free-to-use framework on how to safely use AI tools for business and to bring awareness to the dark sides when people over-rely and overuse them. The framework explores the impact on 4 levels: personal, interpersonal, organizational, and market levels.

In this article, Part 1, we will focus on the internal consequences—the impact of AI on the personal and interpersonal levels. In Part 2, we will explore the external impact: the consequences for the organizational and market levels.

Let’s be clear: Our framework is not an argument against using AI. It is a powerful argument against delegating your human responsibility to it. AI is a tool. Like any tool, it is only as good as the intention behind its use. It is our intention, not the algorithm, that ultimately determines whether it creates progress or harm.

If you don’t have time to read our professional article, you might not be ready to make real, impactful changes. Make time and embrace some voluntary discomfort—because growth happens outside the comfort zone. We’re here to support you every step of the way, because #YouMatter.

I dedicated an entire piece where I talk about the Illusion of Self-development and I discuss whether AI can truly see us. Today I will focus on another perspective.

Do you remember the classical Milgram marshmallow test for kids from the dawn of social psychology? Remember what the main conclusion there was?

In such a reality, there is no room for patience and for self-discipline. We don’t push our minds to solve a problem. We don’t even try to reframe the problem. We want someone else to say what is wrong, why, and how to reverse it, and this is a natural human need.

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• People who struggle to focus;
• Who get easily irritated when someone pushes back or questions their reality;
• We see even more fixated thinking and rigid decision-making because people do not have the cognitive capacity to explore new ideas and to challenge their own view;
• People are less emotionally resilient because they are constantly seeking emotional validation and support;
• They are even more introverted and not being able to adapt to the messy, undisciplined, and complex reality of humans.

Our cravings for control, for clarity, and for personal meaning are leading us to dark times, performative work, and empty existence. And what scares me most, this tendency to talk more with AI than to other human beings hurts not only our minds, body, and emotions, but also our social bodies.

I know that talking with a human being is uncomfortable: it triggers emotional reactions and provokes our sense of a whole self. But this is the most crucial part of our self-development.

Only another human being can see the little shifts in your language, the small victories, and the big fears in your eyes. Why are leaders trading this true way to achieve depth, spirituality, and the freedom of choice of who to be? AI tells what to do, even pretends to explain WHY. It’s a great way to have a moment of emotional relief and some new perspective for insights.

But those moments WON’T create a catharsis.

The algorithm is programmed to keep you psychologically safe. The irony is that because it doesn’t push you enough when you actually need it, it becomes dangerous.

True self-reflection requires friction. It requires the discomfort of sitting with a hard truth. By offering a frictionless, validating “therapy,” AI encourages us to become cognitively lazy. We don’t just avoid discomfort; we become less tolerant of it in all parts of our lives.

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• We have even more self-doubts.
• We are even more obsessed with control and with toxic perfectionism because we know the truth: this is not purely us.
• We are acting, following an AI directive that dictates HOW and WHAT is right to make us US.

We are trading our true self for the illusion of psychological safety and personal growth.

I am trying to break this pattern and to bring back us, our personality and true perception, wisdom, and experiences in our own stories. Let me show you how this story for internal conflicts continues to evolve from the inside out and hurts not only our internal body, mind, and soul, but also our social body.

On the Interpersonal level, we also see shifts that disrupt how people communicate. Our cravings for efficiency and optimization are killing our soft skills and our interpersonal relations. We don’t ask for help, do not share openly with other humans, we don’t even trust other humans anymore. We have an AI, 24/7 here, never really challenging us, but always hurting us by telling us some “truths” and “brutal honesties” about us. Because we said to them so.

Here is the personal perspective this creates: A leader, now conditioned by AI to expect instantly visible added value, sits in a strategy meeting. A colleague presents a new, unpolished, or challenging idea. The leader feels an immediate surge of cognitive irritation. Their tolerance for differences—for the messy, ambiguous, human process of co-creation—is gone. They are losing their social ‘muscle’ for patience and deep listening because the interaction feels “inefficient.”

This is why CEOs and leaders struggle to cope with and navigate the messy, disorganized human reality. They are cognitively overwhelmed, emotionally numb, and extremely irritable.

They simply don’t have the resilience to cope when their perspective is challenged or objectified: “Get to the point.” “Send me the AI summary.” “One-line email only.” “No chit-chat.”

This obsession with “efficiency” is stripping away the one thing we need to make good decisions: the messy, complex, HUMAN context. This is why so many brilliant, introverted leaders are struggling to adapt, nurture relationships, and lead teams in times of rapid change.

And this paradox of “efficient leadership” doesn’t just hurt teams; it disproportionately sabotages the very leaders who crave it most: the introverts. This is why so many brilliant, introverted leaders are struggling to adapt, nurture relationships, and lead teams in times of rapid change.

As introverts, we are wired to process deeply. But when you feed us sterile, AI-generated data, we don’t get clarity. We get stuck. We over-analyze the limited information we have and miss the real-world risks.

We demand “fast” to save cognitive energy. But making a half-informed decision costs us 10x more energy later when we are forced to put out the fires it creates.

The solution isn’t just “less” information. That’s just more noise in the process of the decision-making. The solution is STRUCTURED, deliberate human connection and enough information with deep purpose and personal meaning.

Stop pretending your personality as a CEO is irrelevant.

If you are an introvert who needs processing time, demand a structured framework of questions before the meeting. If you need context, refuse the AI summary and ask for the 5-minute human story.

We have stopped exploring human realities. We make decisions based on who is talking, not on how much they respect our need to reconstruct information in our own way.

My thesis is simple: If you, as a leader, prioritize “fast and simple communication”, you will always be stuck fighting the root causes and the great unknown in business.

Instead of getting better with social dynamics, we get worse. More anxious in social settings, more scared to tell our story before we double-check it with AI or polish it for the audience. It’s getting harder to develop your social skills if you are aiming for authentic living—no filters, no glamour. Being you in a social environment is scary. Pushing the SEND button and being live is even scarier.

We need to be seen and validated. To be celebrated and loved. And now many of us are losing the connection with themselves. They are losing the ability to connect with others. We are hurting our own physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, and social bodies.

In the next part, I will show you how this trend continues to develop in organizational, business, and market settings by following the simple rule:

The way you do one thing as a person, is the way you do everything.

We can’t change the times. And my job is not to talk about whether you should or shouldn’t use AI. My job is to educate and empower people on how to use this tool for proper self-development without harming themselves or others.

Be an ocean in a drop.