Fumio KARA

Papers

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About

Fumio Kara’s research sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction, social robotics, and moral psychology, exploring how people perceive and respond to robots in socially complex roles. His most-cited work, “Critic, compatriot, or chump?: responses to robot blame attribution” (2010, 29 citations), investigates a prescient question: as robots assume greater responsibility, how do humans react when a robot attributes blame to them? Through a carefully designed between-participants experiment, Kara demonstrated that people’s responses vary dramatically depending on the robot’s perceived role—whether critic, ally, or scapegoat—revealing deep-seated psychological mechanisms that shape trust and cooperation. This foundational study has influenced subsequent work on robot accountability, ethical AI design, and human-robot teamwork. Kara’s contributions are particularly notable for bridging experimental social science with engineering, offering empirical evidence that informs how autonomous systems should communicate feedback. While his citation count reflects a focused but growing impact, his research remains highly relevant as robots increasingly enter workplaces, homes, and caregiving contexts, raising urgent questions about blame, responsibility, and social dynamics in human-machine partnerships.