Erin Paeng

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Erin Paeng is a researcher specializing in human-robot interaction (HRI), with a particular focus on the psychological and game-theoretic dimensions of trust and cooperation between humans and robotic agents. Her work investigates how interpersonal trust — a cornerstone of human social behavior — translates into human-robot relationships, and what implications this has for collaborative decision-making. Her most notable contribution, "Human-Robot Trust and Cooperation Through a Game Theoretic Framework" (2016, 14 citations), applies formal game theory to model the dynamics of trust in HRI, offering a rigorous mathematical lens through which human behavioral responses to robots can be understood. A companion study from the same year, "Trust and Cooperation in Human-Robot Decision Making" (8 citations), employs an innovative coin entrustment game to empirically examine whether people make different decisions depending on whether their counterpart is human or robotic — yielding insights with broad implications for robot design and deployment. Paeng's research sits at the intersection of social psychology, robotics, and decision science, contributing foundational thinking to how autonomous systems can be designed to earn and maintain human trust — a critical challenge as robots become increasingly integrated into everyday life.