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About

Takahiro Tsumura is a researcher specializing in human-agent interaction, with a particular focus on trust, empathy, and the social acceptance of AI agents and robots. His work sits at the intersection of social psychology and artificial intelligence, exploring how humans form and repair emotional bonds with anthropomorphic agents in collaborative settings. Tsumura's most influential contributions examine how agents can foster human empathy through mechanisms such as self-disclosure and anthropomorphic design. His 2023 paper on agent self-disclosure has garnered 26 citations, establishing him as a notable voice in understanding how AI can build more meaningful human connections. Complementing this, his research on anthropomorphic agents in game-based contexts (19 citations) reveals how physical and virtual agent characteristics shape cooperative dynamics and task performance. Beyond empathy, Tsumura investigates trust repair and trust dynamics, including innovative work on how robot beep timings and verbal positioning influence human perceptions during repeated task interactions. His experimental methodologies, often employing controlled online and laboratory designs, provide rigorous empirical grounding for his findings. For students and researchers exploring human-robot interaction or AI social integration, Tsumura's body of work offers valuable, evidence-based insights into designing agents that humans can genuinely trust and empathize with.