Melissa J. Ferguson

Cornell University, Yale University, Ferguson Library

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Melissa J. Ferguson is a leading social psychologist whose research explores the dynamics of implicit social cognition—how people form, maintain, and update automatic impressions of others. Her work bridges fundamental questions about human perception with emerging challenges in human-robot interaction. In her highly cited 2019 paper (65 citations), Ferguson demonstrated that implicit first impressions can be updated more flexibly than previously assumed, challenging long-held views about the rigidity of automatic evaluations. This work reshaped how researchers understand the malleability of unconscious social judgments. More recently, Ferguson has extended her framework to human-robot interactions, investigating how people form implicit and explicit impressions of robot competence (2024, 5 citations) and defending the utility of trait attribution models in explaining these dynamics (2023). Her contributions are notable for integrating classic social-cognitive theories with cutting-edge questions about artificial agents, offering a parsimonious account of how perceivers apply the same psychological processes to humans and machines. With a career marked by theoretical depth and interdisciplinary reach, Ferguson continues to influence how we think about the automatic mind in an increasingly automated world.