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About

Maya B. Mathur is a researcher whose work sits at the fascinating intersection of human-robot interaction, social cognition, and experimental psychology. She is best known for her rigorous empirical investigations of the "Uncanny Valley" (UV) phenomenon — the unsettling discomfort humans experience when encountering robots that closely, but imperfectly, resemble human beings. Her landmark 2015 paper, "Navigating a social world with robot partners," has accumulated over 436 citations and is widely regarded as one of the most methodologically robust quantitative examinations of the UV effect, moving beyond the inconsistent findings produced by earlier blended-image studies. Mathur has further deepened the field's understanding by interrogating the cognitive mechanisms underlying UV aversion, particularly exploring whether perceptual category confusion between "robot" and "human" drives these negative reactions, as detailed in her 2019 multisite study. Beyond perceptual research, she has contributed practical tools to the scientific community, including open-source mouse-tracking software for measuring real-time cognitive competition in survey environments. Her early work also examined how android appearance shapes human social trust, demonstrating the breadth of her contributions to understanding how humans navigate an increasingly robot-populated social world.