Fabrizio Bracco

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About

Fabrizio Bracco is a cognitive psychologist whose research lies at the intersection of human-robot interaction, social cognition, and experimental psychology. His most cited work, "Human- or object-like? Cognitive anthropomorphism of humanoid robots" (2022, 28 citations), employs the inversion paradigm—a classic cognitive science method—to investigate whether people mentally process humanoid robots as social agents or mere objects. Across three experiments with 302 participants, Bracco demonstrated that humans cognitively anthropomorphize robots, treating them more like people than objects. This foundational contribution has shaped how researchers understand the automatic, perceptual mechanisms underlying human-robot interaction. Bracco’s work bridges cognitive psychology and robotics, offering critical insights for designing more intuitive and socially acceptable robots. His research is widely cited in fields ranging from artificial intelligence to human factors, and he continues to explore how the human mind attributes social qualities to non-human entities. For students and researchers, Bracco’s studies are essential reading for understanding the cognitive roots of anthropomorphism and the future of human-robot coexistence.