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About

Jolanda Jetten is a distinguished social psychologist whose research has made significant contributions to our understanding of human-robot interaction, social identity, and the psychological dynamics that emerge when artificial intelligence begins to blur the boundaries of human uniqueness. Her work sits at a compelling intersection of social cognition, consumer behavior, and emerging technology, exploring how people respond—emotionally and cognitively—when robots become increasingly humanlike. Jetten's most influential contribution, "Blurring Human–Machine Distinctions" (2016), has accumulated nearly 300 citations, establishing her as a leading voice on anthropomorphism and the threat that human-appearing robots pose to perceptions of human distinctiveness. This foundational work sparked subsequent research, including her 2021 study on AI service robots in domestic settings (140 citations), which provided crucial theoretical grounding for understanding consumer preferences in human-robot interactions. Her more recent work examines the motivational and cognitive roots of "robot fear," probing why androids like Sophia provoke such profound psychological unease. Through these contributions, Jetten has helped shape a rigorous scientific framework for understanding one of the defining social questions of our technological era: what it means to be human in an age of increasingly sophisticated machines.