Solace Shen
University of Washington, Cornell University, Seattle University
Papers
21
Total Citations
1,365
H-Index
13
About
Solace Shen is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), whose work sits at the intersection of social psychology, developmental science, and robotics. Best known for her investigations into how humans — particularly children — form social and moral relationships with humanoid robots, Shen has fundamentally shaped how the field thinks about robot personhood and accountability. Her landmark 2012 study on children's relationships with Robovie (416 citations) revealed that young people attribute genuine social and moral standing to robots, a finding that challenged prevailing assumptions about what qualifies as a meaningful relationship. Complementing this, her equally influential work on moral accountability (162 citations) demonstrated that adults, too, grapple with assigning blame to robots that cause harm. Shen further advanced the theoretical foundation of HRI by championing the "new ontological category" hypothesis, arguing that social robots occupy a conceptually distinct category of being. Her later research expanded into group dynamics, showing how robots can shape team performance, facilitate conflict resolution in children, and even enhance human creativity. Across more than a decade of rigorous empirical work, Shen has consistently asked not just what robots *can* do, but what their growing presence *means* for human relationships and society.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Do people hold a humanoid robot morally accountable for the harm it causes?162 citations · 2012
- 3Children's Social Relationships With Current and Near-Future Robots136 citations · 2012
- 4The new ontological category hypothesis in human-robot interaction125 citations · 2011
- 5
- 6"Stop. I See a Conflict Happening."92 citations · 2018
- 7
- 8Will People Keep the Secret of a Humanoid Robot?54 citations · 2015
- 9Human creativity can be facilitated through interacting with a social robot42 citations · 2016
- 10NOC NOC, Who’s There? A New Ontological Category (NOC) for Social Robots37 citations · 2017