Jaclyn Molan

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About

Jaclyn Molan is a rising scholar in human-robot interaction, with a focused expertise in the psychological measurement of human perceptions of robotic systems. Her primary research area centers on the development and validation of psychometric tools to quantify affective and cognitive responses to robots, most notably the construct of perceived danger. Molan’s major contribution is the creation of the Perceived Danger (PD) Scale, the first psychometrically valid instrument designed to measure how dangerous people perceive robots to be. Through a rigorous, multi-study process involving exploratory factor analysis, she defined the construct and validated a 12-item bifactor scale with four distinct subdimensions. This foundational work, published in 2025 and already garnering 4 citations, addresses a critical gap in the literature by providing researchers with a reliable tool to assess a key barrier to robot acceptance. Her achievement is notable for its methodological rigor and its potential to inform the design of safer, more trustworthy autonomous systems. As the field of social robotics expands, Molan’s contributions are poised to become essential for studies on human-robot trust and risk perception.