Michelle Vu

Papers

Total Citations

165

H-Index

About

Michelle Vu is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction, with a focus on how people perceive and attribute mental states to robots. Her most-cited work, "No fair!! An interaction with a cheating robot" (2010, 165 citations), explores the boundaries of social cognition by having participants play rock-paper-scissors against a humanoid robot that either plays fairly or cheats. This study revealed that even subtle behavioral deviations—like cheating—can trigger strong attributions of intentionality and moral judgment toward robots, challenging assumptions about machine agency. Vu’s research bridges cognitive science, robotics, and social psychology, demonstrating how robotic behavior shapes human trust, fairness, and emotional responses. Her work has been instrumental in understanding the social dynamics of human-robot relationships, with implications for designing more intuitive and ethically aware autonomous systems. By showing that people treat robots as social actors capable of “unfair” actions, Vu has influenced subsequent studies on robot deception, anthropomorphism, and the ethical design of interactive AI. Her contributions continue to inform how we build machines that coexist with humans in socially meaningful ways.