Wenchen Li

Papers

Total Citations

360

H-Index

About

Wenchen Li is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction, with a focus on trust dynamics and decision-making in high-stakes environments. Her most influential work, "Overtrust of robots in emergency evacuation scenarios" (2016), has garnered over 360 citations, establishing her as a leading voice on the risks of misplaced reliance on autonomous systems. In this landmark study, Li demonstrated that participants who interacted with a robot in a non-emergency task were significantly more likely to follow its guidance during a simulated evacuation—even when the robot led them into danger. This finding exposed a critical vulnerability in human-robot collaboration: the tendency to overtrust machines based on prior benign interactions. Li’s contributions have profound implications for the design of emergency response robots, safety protocols, and ethical guidelines for autonomous systems. Her work bridges cognitive science, robotics, and public safety, challenging engineers to build robots that earn appropriate trust rather than blind obedience. For students and researchers, Li’s research serves as a vital cautionary tale about the hidden perils of automation in life-or-death scenarios.