When Algorithms Become Sacred: A Cognitive-Psychological Model of Trust, Authority, and Meaning in AI Interaction

This study develops a theory-building framework explaining why artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly perceived not merely as a tool, but as an epistemic and moral authority in contemporary digital societies. Integrating social cognition, communication theory, and the cognitive science of religion, the paper introduces the concept of cognitive sacredness to capture a threshold condition in which AI is treated as trustworthy beyond verification and normatively binding. The proposed model specifies a five-stage process linking uncertainty, anthropomorphism, epistemic elevation, and quasi-religious attribution to behavioral reliance and ritualized interaction. It further identifies boundary conditions at the individual, contextual, and technological levels. The framework therefore clarifies not only how sacralization emerges, but also when it is more or less likely to occur. By theorizing AI as a cognitively sacred object, the article reconceptualizes human-AI interaction as a process of authority construction rather than mere technology use, offering a novel theoretical explanation for how epistemic authority is constructed and stabilized in human-AI interaction.