Giorgia Buracchio

Department of Public Health, University of Turin

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Giorgia Buracchio is a rising researcher in Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), whose work focuses on the critical role of emotional alignment in shaping how humans perceive and engage with social robots. Her primary research areas include affective computing, empathic communication, and the psychological dynamics of human-robot relationships. Buracchio’s major contributions center on experimentally demonstrating that when robots adapt their emotional expressions to match a user’s state, it significantly enhances mental state attribution—the user’s ability to see the robot as having intentions and feelings—and increases user empathy toward the robot. In her 2025 study using the NAO robot, she showed that emotionally aligned dialogue fosters deeper social bonding. Extending this work with the Pepper robot, she further revealed that such alignment not only improves communication styles but also boosts the robot’s persuasive power. Though her papers are early in their citation life (2 citations each), they represent foundational steps in a promising line of inquiry. Buracchio’s research is notable for its rigorous experimental design and its potential to inform the development of more intuitive, socially adept robots for healthcare, education, and service applications.