Although job satisfaction is generally stable, AI-induced organizational changes are pressuring job satisfaction. Prior research shows contradictory findings: some suggest that AI literacy boosts productivity and someone’s self-esteem, while others argue that it increases one’s awareness of AI’s threats to the nature of work and career perspectives. Understanding this tension is crucial, considering that job satisfaction underpins both employee well-being and organizational performance. This thesis assumes an inverted-U relationship between AI literacy and job satisfaction, with technostress as the mechanism driving the decline. Additionally, as AI develops increasingly human-like features, technostress may vary depending on self-construal: independent orientations are suggested to amplify technostress,
while interdependent orientations may buffer it. While the inverted-U was expected, this study specifically examines the potential decreasing effect, testing technostress as the mediating mechanism in a linear regression model. Data was collected through a survey from 106 employees in the Dutch professional services industry. AI literacy showed no direct effect on job satisfaction but indirectly reduced it through reduced technostress, challenging the expected inverted-U relationship. Self-construal did not moderate this AI literacy’s effects on technostress. This thesis contributes to the inconsistent findings of AI literacy’s effects on job satisfaction and shows that AI literacy reduces technostress and acts as a protective resource rather than a liability, challenging the idea of an inverted-U relationship with job
satisfaction. However, the small sample, cross-sectional design, and self-reported AI literacy may limit the findings, highlighting the need for longitudinal studies with larger samples.