Russell Perkins

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

Russell Perkins investigates the psychological foundations of human-robot interaction, focusing on how trust is built, broken, and repaired between people and autonomous systems. His work draws a critical distinction between two types of trust violations: performance-based failures, where a robot simply makes a mistake, and moral-based violations, where a robot appears to act against human values or ethical norms. In his highly cited 2022 paper, “The Reason for an Apology Matters for Robot Trust Repair” (10 citations), Perkins demonstrated that the effectiveness of a robot’s apology depends on whether it addresses the specific type of trust that was broken. His earlier 2021 study, “Moral-Trust Violation vs Performance-Trust Violation by a Robot: Which Hurts More?” (4 citations), provided foundational evidence that moral violations are perceived as more damaging and harder to repair than performance errors. By applying established trust theory from human relationships to human-robot contexts, Perkins has helped shape a more nuanced understanding of trust repair strategies in HRI. His work is essential reading for researchers designing socially intelligent robots that must maintain long-term cooperative relationships with humans.