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About

Teresa Flanagan investigates how children and adults conceptualize the minds, choices, and moral standing of robots and interactive technologies—a rapidly growing field at the intersection of developmental psychology and human-robot interaction. Her work reveals that even young children hold nuanced beliefs about technological agents: they distinguish between human and robot capacities for choice, feeling, and moral responsibility, often showing greater skepticism toward inaccurate robots than adults do. In her most cited paper (29 citations), Flanagan examined how 4- to 11-year-olds attribute experiences, thoughts, and morals to familiar household devices versus advanced humanoid robots, uncovering key developmental shifts in children’s “theory of machine mind.” Her 2021 study (14 citations) demonstrated that children, like adults, constrain attributions of choice to robots, while her 2024 work highlights children’s heightened sensitivity to robot errors. Most recently, her 2025 paper explores how perceived ability to feel influences moral judgments of robot transgressors. Flanagan’s research is essential for designing developmentally appropriate, ethically aware technologies and for understanding how the next generation will navigate a world shared with artificial agents.