William Shugars

Papers

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About

William Shugars is a researcher whose work sits at the intersection of human-robot interaction and social cognition, with a particular focus on how trust and prior experience shape our relationships with autonomous systems. In his highly cited 2017 study, "Trust and Prior Experience in Human-Robot Interaction" (54 citations), Shugars conducted a pivotal experiment demonstrating that users with prior exposure to robots exhibit significantly higher trust scores after observing a robot complete a task, and show smaller discrepancies in their trust assessments compared to novices. This foundational work has become a key reference for researchers designing more intuitive and socially acceptable robotic agents. By systematically unpacking how familiarity modulates human perceptions of machine reliability, Shugars has provided critical insights for the development of collaborative robots in healthcare, manufacturing, and domestic settings. His contributions help bridge the gap between technical robotics and the psychological realities of human users, making his research essential reading for anyone exploring the future of human-machine collaboration.