Okke Rikmenspoel

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About

Okke Rikmenspoel is a researcher at the forefront of human-robot interaction, specializing in the psychology of how people perceive and stereotype robots. His work uniquely applies the Stereotype Content Model (SCM) to technology, revealing that people hold ambivalent stereotypes—mixing warmth and competence judgments—toward robots, much like they do toward human groups. In his most-cited study, "Models of (Often) Ambivalent Robot Stereotypes" (2023, 18 citations), Rikmenspoel demonstrated through a large-scale online experiment with 120 participants that robot stereotypes are structured along dimensions of communion and agency, and are often linked to gendered task suitability. His follow-up work, "Ambivalent Stereotypes Towards Gendered Robots" (2022, 5 citations), further explores the persistence of bias, particularly toward female and neutral robot designs. By bridging social psychology and robotics, Rikmenspoel’s research offers critical insights for designing more inclusive and less biased AI systems. His findings have significant implications for robot design, human-robot trust, and the ethical deployment of social robots in society.