Papers
16
Total Citations
472
H-Index
10
About
Megan Strait is a pioneering researcher in human-robot interaction (HRI), whose work spans robot communication, social perception, and the psychological underpinnings of how humans respond to increasingly humanlike machines. She is perhaps best known for her extensive investigations into the "uncanny valley" phenomenon — the discomfort people experience when robots appear almost, but not quite, human. Her 2017 studies, each garnering 59 citations, revealed that both atypical features and category ambiguity drive aversion toward humanlike robots, while public commentary on YouTube exposed disturbing patterns of sexualization and racialization in how people perceive social robots. Her 2018 work boldly extended this inquiry to show that robots racialized as marginalized identities face greater dehumanization than those coded as White, raising urgent ethical questions for robot design. With her most-cited paper (103 citations) examining robot advice-giving strategies, Strait has also shaped how researchers think about robot communication and interaction modality. A committed advocate for scientific rigor, her 2022 reproducibility paper (50 citations) calls on the HRI community to adopt more transparent research practices. Collectively, her scholarship bridges cognitive science, ethics, and robotics to humanize — and critically interrogate — our relationship with machines.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Too Much Humanness for Human-Robot Interaction60 citations · 2015
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- 5Reproducibility in Human-Robot Interaction: Furthering the Science of HRI50 citations · 2022
- 6
- 7A Three-Site Reproduction of the Joint Simon Effect with the NAO Robot23 citations · 2020
- 8You're Wigging Me Out!18 citations · 2021
- 9Children's Responding to Humanlike Agents Reflects an Uncanny Valley17 citations · 2019
- 10