Alexander Eng

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About

Alexander Eng is a leading voice in the emerging field of human-robot interaction, exploring the psychological mechanisms that govern our relationships with machines. His key research areas center on social robotics and the psychology of artificial intelligence, investigating how people instinctively perceive and engage with embodied AI. Eng’s seminal 2023 paper, “People treat social robots as real social agents” (11 citations), demonstrates that when confronted with moving, talking robots, humans automatically interact with them as authentic social agents possessing minds—a finding that challenges our assumptions about the boundary between real and artificial. His comprehensive 2025 chapter, “The Psychology of Robots and Artificial Intelligence” (8 citations), synthesizes these insights, examining how the human mind adapts to a world increasingly populated by intelligent machines. Though his citation counts are still growing, Eng’s work is notable for its timely, accessible framing of a critical psychological shift: as robots become commonplace, our innate social wiring treats them as genuine partners, not mere tools. For students and researchers, Eng offers a compelling bridge between cognitive science and robotics, revealing the profound implications of our willingness to accept machines as social beings.