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About

Michaela Gummerum is a developmental psychologist whose research sits at the fascinating intersection of moral cognition, human–robot interaction, and adolescent risk-taking. Her work explores how people—from preschoolers to adults—make moral decisions and take risks, especially when influenced by artificial agents. A key contribution is her pioneering use of virtual reality to study moral action, as in her highly cited 2017 paper (62 citations) that simulated moral dilemmas with realistic haptic feedback. She has also shown that robots can exert peer-like pressure on risk-taking behavior (31 citations), and that virtual agents can nudge adolescents in both helpful and harmful directions (9 citations). Her cross-cultural work (2025, 5 citations) compares how Japanese and Italian children judge moral transgressions by humans versus robots, revealing how culture shapes our responses to artificial agents. Gummerum’s research is notable for its methodological creativity—combining VR, robotics, and developmental paradigms—and for addressing urgent questions about how emerging technologies reshape human morality and decision-making from childhood onward.