Papers
23
Total Citations
544
H-Index
12
About
Jaime Banks is a leading scholar in human-robot interaction and social robotics, whose work sits at the fascinating intersection of communication, psychology, and emerging technology. She is best known for her rigorous investigations into how people perceive, evaluate, and form social relationships with robotic agents. Her development of the Perceived Moral Agency Scale (2018, 131 citations) stands as a landmark methodological contribution, providing researchers with a validated tool to measure moral attributions across both human and machine agents. Banks has made significant strides in understanding Theory of Mind as it applies to social robots, demonstrating that humans engage similar mentalizing processes with robots as with other people. Her cultivation research reveals how media portrayals of robots — from cinematic villains to beloved companions — meaningfully shape public expectations and social judgments of real-world robotic technology. She has further explored how moral behavior, mind perception, and ontological heuristics interact to influence trust and acceptance of robotic agents. With over 450 cumulative citations, Banks consistently pushes the boundaries of how scholars conceptualize machine minds, moral standing, and the evolving social contract between humans and intelligent technologies — making her essential reading for anyone entering this rapidly expanding field.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
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- 2Theory of Mind in Social Robots: Replication of Five Established Human Tests94 citations · 2019
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- 7Of like mind: The (mostly) similar mentalizing of robots and humans.24 citations · 2020
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- 9A Common Social Distance Scale for Robots and Humans16 citations · 2019
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