Susanne Quadflieg

New York University, University of Bristol

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About

Susanne Quadflieg is a leading researcher in social cognitive neuroscience, whose work bridges the gap between human social perception and emerging technologies. Her primary research areas include the neural and emotional processing of social interactions, with a particular focus on how people perceive and respond to humanoid robots versus other humans. Quadflieg’s most cited paper, “In our own image? Emotional and neural processing differences when observing human–human vs human–robot interactions” (2015, 63 citations), is a pioneering investigation into the neural correlates of the “uncanny valley” phenomenon—the eerie feeling elicited by robots that closely resemble humans. Using functional neuroimaging, she revealed distinct patterns of brain activity when participants observed human-robot interactions compared to human-human interactions, offering foundational insights into the cognitive mechanisms underlying social responses to artificial agents. Her follow-up work, “Now you feel it, now you don’t” (2016), further challenges assumptions about eeriness by examining how perceptions of experiential mind in robots and humans shape emotional reactions. Quadflieg’s research is highly influential in social neuroscience and human-robot interaction, providing critical evidence for how the human brain navigates the blurred boundaries between natural and artificial social agents.