Papers
41
Total Citations
742
H-Index
13
About
Serena Marchesi is a cognitive neuroscientist and human-robot interaction researcher whose work sits at the fascinating intersection of social cognition, anthropomorphism, and artificial agents. Her research primarily investigates how and why humans attribute mental states to humanoid robots — a phenomenon known as adopting the "intentional stance" — and what cognitive, neural, and cultural factors shape these tendencies. Marchesi's most influential contribution, "Do We Adopt the Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots?" (2019, 215 citations), established a foundational framework for understanding how people extend social cognition mechanisms to robots. Building on this, she has explored the neurological underpinnings of robot-directed attitudes, demonstrating through resting-state brain activity that individual biases toward robots have measurable neural signatures (2020, 72 citations). Her cross-cultural work on anthropomorphism (2022, 60 citations) further revealed important limitations in existing theoretical frameworks. Notably, Marchesi has shown that subtle behavioral cues — such as gaze responsiveness and decision-making speed — significantly influence human perception of robot agency. Across her body of work, accumulating over 560 citations, she has consistently advanced our understanding of the psychological conditions under which humans perceive artificial agents as intentional beings, with meaningful implications for ethical robot design and human-AI interaction research.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1Do We Adopt the Intentional Stance Toward Humanoid Robots?215 citations · 2019
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