Department of Psychology

Previous Lab Member

Research interests

• Social Robotics
• Robot Evaluation
• Self-Disclosure in Human-Robot Interaction
• Perceived moral agency of robots
• Trust and psychological closeness in Human-Robot Interaction

PhD Project

In my PhD project I examine the social psychological aspects of human-robot interaction. I am particularly interested in factors influencing the development and maintenance of relationships with social robots and its consequences.

 

Teaching

Summer term 2023

Social Influence and Science Communication (seminar)

Winter term 2022/2023

Social Psychological Aspects of Human-Machine Interaction for Master's students (block seminar)
Social Psychological Aspects of Human-Machine Interaction (block seminar)
Social Influence and Science Communication (seminar)

Summer term 2022

Social Influence and Science Communication (seminar)

Winter term 2021/2022

Social Influence with a Focus on Science Communication (seminar)

Summer term 2021

Interpersonal Relations (Seminar)

Winter term 2020/2021

Social Influence (seminar)
Social Psychological Aspects of Human-Machine Interaction (seminar)

Summer term 2020

Affiliation, interpersonal attraction and close relationships (seminar)

Winter term 2019/2020

Social influence (seminar)

Summer term 2019

Social Relationships and Interactions (seminar)

In 2021, Angelika Penner has been granted a teaching project at the Quality Funds for Teaching on the topic of "Social Influence and Science Communication". In the seminar conducted as part of the teaching project in the Winter term 2021/2022, the students covered social psychological content on the topic of "Social Influence" as well as content on the topic of "Science Communication" with a focus on science slams. The students themselves created and presented a science slam contribution to a scientific article, with technical support from the media practice team at Bielefeld University. Teaching staff, instructors, lectures interested in the topic of science communication in teaching are welcome to contact Angelika Penner.

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests

My research focuses on identifying characteristics of the acceptance of intelligent technology to improve Human Machine Interaction. My main research interests are:

• technology acceptance
• testing of user expectations and needs
• evaluation of usability of intelligent technology
• anthropomorphism and dehumanization

About me

Since January 2015, I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) in Bielefeld. I earned my Bachelor degree in ‘Social Science’ (major) and ‘Psychology’ (minor) in September 2009 from Bielefeld University, where I also graduated from my Master ‘Systems Biology of Brain and Behavior’ in December 2011. In March 2015 I completed my PhD in Social Psychology and Intelligent Systems (doctoral programme) at University Bielefeld.
 

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests

• human-machine-interaction
• attitudes towards assistive technologies and robots
• sexual harassment and sexual objectification
• gender stereotypes and ambivalent sexism
• prejudice and discrimination
• interpersonal power relations

About me

Since October 2014, I am member of the research group 'Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research', working there in the BMBF-project 'KogniHome'. I finished my studies of psychology at the Bielefeld University in 2010 and did my PhD on “Ways of explaining sexual harassment: motivating, enabling and legitimizing processes” in social psychology in 2014.

My work in the project “KogniHome”

“KogniHome” is a BMBF funded project developing networked technology for a smart apartment to make daily life easier. I investigate ethical and social questions entailed by the development and use of intelligent technology in the domestic sphere. Different technical systems that can assist humans will enable individual interaction with the occupants through language and gestures. Especially the occupants’ needs are in the focus of my research and are addressed by acceptance- and usability studies. Findings are incorporated in the ongoing development of the assistive technologies. Furthermore, I evaluate the situated human-machine dialog, which is realized by a virtual dialog assistant.

Previous Lab Member

 

About me

Since October 2018 I am a researcher in the Applied Social Psychology and Gender research group. I work in the BMBF funded project poliTE - Soziale Angemessenheit für Assistentsysteme, Teilvorhaben: Sozialpsychologische Perspektive. The project focuses on social adequacy in human-technology interaction, more specifically the implicit and explicit rules which apply with regards to social adequacy in human-technology interaction. The website can be found here: http://polite.fokos.de/#. I was already part of the project in 2018 as an intern and research assistant. In 2017 I received my Bachelor of Science (psychology) at Technical University Braunschweig, where I worked as a student assistant in different departments between 2015 and 2017, too.

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests

In general terms, my work focuses on understanding and modifying intergroup processes in human-human as well as human-robot interactions. My main research interests are:

• Social categorization processes and intergroup bias in human-robot interaction
• Generalization effects of evaluative and non-evaluative conditioning
• Evaluative conditioning of intergroup attitudes
• Effects of imagined intergroup contact on intergroup behavior and real intergroup encounters
• Antecedents and consequences of anthropomorphism

About me

Since 2010, I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) in Bielefeld. I earned my Diploma in Psychology (equivalent to a Master’s degree) from Greifswald University (Germany) in 2006, where I also completed my PhD in Social Psychology in 2010.

Previous Lab Member

 

Reseach Interests

• Reciprocity and cooperation in Human Robot Interaction
• Moral decisions in Human Robot Interaction
• Robots in Education,  Health and Entertainment 
• Robots and Language
• Robot Design

About me

Hi there, this is Ed. I have been working in Human Robot Interaction for several years. I hold a PhD in Human Interface Technology at University of Canterbury, New Zealand. My background is in Bionics Engineering (UPIITA-IPN) , Industrial Design and Ergonomics (PDI-UNAM), and Interface Technologies (HITLAB NZ).  I have experience as a lecturer in several universities. Besides I worked at the Biomedical industry for a couple of years.

Apart of research papers,  I have several creative outcomes as educative videos, funny robot videos,  and short movies. I also have interest in science communication and my work has had certain impact in media. Continuously, I am reviewer for different international conferences and journals related to social robotics and engineering. I also volunteer to coach young students with interest in robotics. I consider research and education are essential to improve our world and to be better human beings.

Dr. Julia Stapels

Previous Lab Member

Postal Address

CITEC Center for Cognitive Interaction Technology 
Research building
Inspiration 1 / Zehlendorfer Damm 199
33619 Bielefeld

About me

Since November 2018 I am a researcher and doctoral student at the 'Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research' Lab at CITEC. In 2018 I received my master's degree in psychology from the University of Cologne, where I worked as a research assistant at the 'Social and Economic Cognition I' group since 2016. In 2015 I received my bachelor’s degree in psychology, also from the University of Cologne.

 

Research interests

• attitudes towards robots
• ambivalence in Human-Robot Interaction
• social robotics

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests

• sexual objectification
• dehumanization
• sexism and gender stereotype
• derogatory language
• homophobia

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests

My research topic focuses on (cognitive and social) psychological processes in observing and interacting with social robots. Specifically I am interested in:

• Effects of anthropomorphic appearance in social robotics
• Social ostracism toward human and non-human agents
• Intergroup relations and conflicts
• Anthropomorphism and dehumanization
• Cognitive conflicts during categorization process

About me

Since February 2016, I am a post-doctoral researcher in the ‘Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research' group at the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC). I earned my Master Degree in Social Psychology from the University of Padua (Italy) in 2011, and I completed my PhD in Psychological Science and Education at the University of Trento (Italy) in December 2015.

Previous Lab Member

Julian Anslinger was a research assistant in the Applied Social Psychologie and Gender Research Lab from February 2016 to December 2018, where he also wrote his PhD thesis on sexual objectification.

Currently Julian Anslinger is a post-doc researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Technolgy, Work and Culture (IFZ) in Graz, Austria.

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests

• Influence of gender stereotypes on language processing
• Trust in HRI
• Influence of user characteristics and stereotypes on HRI in Smart home contexts

About me

Since September 2015 I am a scientific employee and doctoral student in the work group “Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research Lab”. I work in projects “Cognitive Service Robotics Apartment as Ambient Host” (CSRA) and “Experimental Psychologic Gender Research”. I did my Bachelor degree (2012) and Master degree (2015) in Psychology at Bielefeld University. During my Master degree, I worked as a research assistant in the “Language & Cognition” work group at CITEC and in the project “Social mobilization strategies in the field of climate protection policy” at Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences.

My doctoral project

My doctoral project is at an interplay between gender research, psycholinguistics, and social robotics. Using the eye tracking method, more precisely the visual-world-paradigm (Cooper, 1974), I investigate how gender stereotypes impact language processing. According to the visual-world-paradigm, people look to what they listen. What people listen to and what they actually understand is influenced by their general world knowledge and by stereotypes. Thus, expectedly people look toward a male character depicted besides a female character as soon as they listen to a stereotypical male adverb (e.g., competent), even before it is known from the sentence to whom this adverb refers (see Bernotat, Guerra, Bohner, & Eyssel, 2016). On one hand, I investigate if gendered adverbs influence participants’ gaze-direction. On the other hand, using the visual-world-paradigm I investigate if robots are associated with gender, gendered tasks, and professions, and if the same gender stereotypes are activated toward robots than toward humans.

My work in the „Cognitive Service Robotics Apartment as Ambient Host“ (CSRA)

CSRA is an interdisciplinary research project in which computer scientists, linguists, and psychologists work together to implement an intelligent apartment lab. I represent the evaluation group which investigates how users intuitively interact with an intelligent environment, which control systems they prefer, and how they want to use them (see Bernotat et al., 2016). Moreover, I investigate how to design a robot in a user-friendly manner so that it could be integrated within the intelligent apartment lab.

DAAD- Scholarship "Binational Doctoral Program"

 

Binational Joint Supervision of Doctoral Work:

• Prof. Dr. Nicholas Haslam, University of Melbourne
• JProf. Dr. Friederike Eyssel

 

Research interests

• Behaviour change
• enviornmental psychology
• self-regulation
•  attitudes
• attention

About me

In June 2014, I have started my PhD at the 'Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences' in Australia with research parts at the CITEC in Bielefeld. As part of my Master degree at the University of Cologne (received in 2014), I worked as a research assistant at the University of Melbourne in 2013. In 2011, I received my Bachelor degree in Business Psychology at the University of Lueneburg.

My PhD thesis examines the psychological mechanisms involved in self-regulation of environmentally sustainable behaviour, particularly, how people interact with cultural artefacts, i.e., various things in the built-environment such as signage and objects in everyday life. The research shows that people’s explicitly held pro-environmental tendencies, rather than implicit environmental identity, play a significant role in guiding attention to and evaluations of environmentally relevant cultural artefacts, and signage can be a useful tool for aiding people’s self-regulatory efforts in sustainable behaviour.

Previous Lab Member

 

Research Interests

• User modeling using nonverbal signals
• Cultural differences in acceptance of social robots
• Android Science
• Anthropomorphism in Human-Robot Interaction

About me

Since February 2017, I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the ‘Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research' group at the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC). I received my master degree in Interactive Technology from the University of Tampere (Finland) in 2010 and PhD degree in Human Interface Technology from the University of Canterbury (New Zealand) in 2015. In the past, I worked at the University of Salzburg (Austria), Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (Japan) and Abu Dhabi University (UAE).

Scholar

 

Research Interests

• abuse in human-robot interaction
• robot perception and mind attribution
• biases and heuristics in human cognition

About me

In April 2017 I started my PhD on Robot bullying at the HITlab UC in Christchurch, New Zealand. Under the supervision of Christoph Bartneck and Friederike Eyssel, I have three years to figure out what psychological factors prompt people to bully robots. I got a double research masters degree (social & health psychology; methodology & statistics of the behavioural, biomedical and social sciences) from the University of Utrecht, as well as a bachelors degree in social psychology. I have conducted research projects on safe sex practices (2012) and support needs of teenage mothers (2012-2013) for the Dutch municipal health care services, as well as a project on the use of big data in the educational system for the University of Twente (2017).

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests 

• Social robotics
• Attitudes toward robots
• Robots in education
• Cooperative human-robot learning
• Gender stereotypes and human-robot learning

About me

Since February 2014, I am a PhD student in the ‘Applied Social Psychology and Gender Research’ group and I am a member of the CITEC Graduate School. I received my Bachelor and Master’s degree in Psychology and Romanic Philology (M.Ed.) from the TU Dortmund University.

PhD project

My PhD project focuses on the evaluation, acceptance, and applicability of robots in educational contexts. The primary purpose is to explore students’ and teachers’ – the future users of educational robots – attitudes regarding the prospect of having educational robots integrated into learning contexts. Moreover, my project aims at investigating effects of cooperative human-robot learning on the individuals’ motivational state, on objective criteria (e.g., learning performance), and on the subjective evaluation of the robot and the interaction. Particularly, my research project aims at investigating factors that are necessary for successful cooperative learning with educational robots. These include, among others, social interdependence with robots, robot embodiment, or the impact of gender stereotypes on learning with robots.

Media presence.

"The gender of robots". Is it important for a robot to have a male or female appearance? Researchers have found out that people tend to apply familiar clichés about gender roles to robots as well. Interview for DW Science, April 2017.

Previous Lab Member

 

Research interests

• Social robotics
• Psychological evaluation of user expectations in smart environments
• Human-robot interaction in smart environments

About me

Since April 2014, I am working as a research associate in the 'Cognitive Service Robotics Apartment' project at CITEC. I received my Masters degree in Psychology from Bielefeld University in April 2014.
 

Previous Lab Member

 

Research Interests

• persuasion with virtual agents
• anthropomorphism
• social robotics