Laura Jastrzab
Papers
2
Total Citations
13
H-Index
2
About
Laura Jastrzab is a rising researcher in human-robot interaction, whose work challenges long-held assumptions about how we perceive and engage with artificial agents. Her research centers on the psychology of social robotics, specifically examining the factors that drive people to attribute mental states—like intentions, emotions, and consciousness—to machines. In her most influential study, "Beyond human-likeness: Socialness is more influential when attributing mental states to robots" (2024, 11 citations), Jastrzab and her team demonstrated that a robot’s perceived socialness—its ability to interact and respond socially—matters far more than its physical human-likeness when people decide whether to treat it as a minded being. This finding, replicated and expanded in a 2023 version (2 citations), upends the dominant “uncanny valley” narrative and offers a new framework for designing more effective, trustworthy social robots. By showing that even a mechanoid robot can be granted mental states if it behaves socially, Jastrzab’s work has immediate implications for robotics, AI ethics, and human-computer interaction. Her research is already shaping how engineers and designers think about robot behavior over appearance, making her a key voice in the next generation of human-robot interaction scholarship.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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