Emily S Cross

Bangor University · School of Psychology

Introduction Artificial intelligence (AI) and robots are increasingly shaping the aesthetic preferences of art consumers, influencing how they perceive and engage with artistic works. This development raises various questions: do cues to the humanness of the origin of an artwork or artist influence our aesthetic preferences?. Methods Across two ex...

The shape and texture of humans and humanoid robots provide perceptual information that help us to appropriately categorise these stimuli. However, it remains unclear which features and attributes are driving the assignment into human and non-human categories. To explore this issue, we ran a series of five preregistered experiments wherein we prese...

In recent years, the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has proliferated across various domains, ranging from advertising and social media to the generation of artwork for presentation at esteemed art exhibitions and for sale on the art auction market. Despite its growing prevalence, empirical data show that people maintain a clear bia...

Aesthetic appreciation of full-body movements is likely shaped by our cumulative bodily experiences, yet most of the extant literature in this domain has focused on expertise and familiarity. We ran two experiments exploring individual differences in embodied experience and experience with the arts: In Study 1, we explored how participants’ (n = 41...

Background Dance is a promising health resource for older adults, but empirical evidence remains inconsistent. The lack of synthesised evidence regarding program design, dose, and delivery limits understanding of factors influencing participation and health outcomes. This scoping review aimed to map the scope, range, and effectiveness of dance prog...

As social beings, we are adept at coordinating our body movements and gaze with others. Often, when coordinating with another person, we orient ourselves to face them, as mutual gaze provides valuable cues pertaining to attention and intentions. Moreover, movement synchrony and mutual gaze are associated with prosocial outcomes, yet the perceptual...

The promise of social robot applications in education has attracted growing enthusiasm over the past decade, with the potential to augment and support learning outcomes across contexts. However, the adoption of education robots and their expected benefits are yet to be realised, due to complexity, cost, and variability between robots. Soft robots,...

Throughout history, art creation has been regarded as a uniquely human means to express original ideas, emotions, and experiences. However, as Generative Artificial Intelligence continues to change our visual, aesthetic, legal, and economic culture, important questions are emerging regarding the moral and aesthetic consequences of AI-generated art....

Interactions with artificial agents (e.g. robots and avatars) are becoming increasingly commonplace. While research has established that user beliefs, or an artificial agent’s appearance, can shape social outcomes with artificial agents, little is known about how these factors interact. We used virtual reality (VR) with eye- and motion-tracking, to...

Whether in performing arts, sporting, or everyday contexts, when we watch others move, we tend to enjoy bodies moving in synchrony. Our enjoyment of body movements is further enhanced by our own prior experience with performing those movements, or our ‘embodied experience’. The relationships between movement synchrony and enjoyment, as well as embo...

The process of synchronizing our body movements with others is known to enhance rapport, affect, and prosociality. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that synchronizing activities may enhance cognitive performance. Unknown, by contrast, is the extent to which people’s individual traits and experiences influence their ability to achieve and mai...

This study explores how social interactions with artificial agents are shaped by user beliefs about their sentience (i.e., Do they have a human-like mind?) as well as their physical appearance. Artificial agents, such as virtual characters and physical robots, are becoming more common. Emerging research has demonstrated that beliefs that users have...

An increasing presence of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots in the realm of art is moulding the aesthetic identity of the new-age consumer of art. Various questions arise with this development: do cues to the humanness of the origin of an artwork or artist influence our aesthetic preferences? Across two experiments, we investigated how the pe...

As social beings, we are adept at coordinating bodily movements and gaze with others. Often, when coordinating with another person, we orient ourselves to face them, as mutual gaze provides valuable cues pertaining to attention and intentions. Moreover, motor synchrony and mutual gaze are associated with prosocial outcomes, yet the perceptual conse...

The process of synchronizing our body movements with others is known to enhance rapport, affect, and prosociality. Furthermore, emerging evidence suggests that synchronizing activities may enhance cognitive performance. Unknown, by contrast, is the extent to which people’s individual traits and experiences influence their ability to achieve and mai...

Numerous studies have investigated proxemics in the context of human–robot interactions, but little is known about whether these insights can be applied to human–drone interactions (HDI). As drones become more common in social settings, it is crucial to ensure they navigate in a socially acceptable and human-friendly way. Understanding how individu...

Developing motor synchrony with a peer (through interventions such as the mirror game) can yield collaborative, cognitive and social benefits. However, it is also well established that observation by an audience can improve cognition. The combined and relative advantages offered by motor synchronization and audience effects are not yet understood....

While evidence abounds that motor synchrony is a powerful form of ‘social glue’ for those involved, we have yet to understand how observers perceive motor synchrony: can observers estimate the degree of synchrony accurately? Is synchrony aesthetically pleasing? In two preregistered experiments (n = 161 each), we assess how accurately observers can...

According to aesthetic cognitivism theory, art represents a source of knowledge that promotes understanding, creativity and thinking. However, it remains unclear exactly what kind of art knowledge shapes understanding and thinking. Given the important role played by the arts in acquiring knowledge and facilitating learning and understanding of huma...

While still relatively rare, longitudinal hyperscanning studies are exceptionally valuable for documenting changes in inter-brain synchrony, which may in turn underpin how behaviors develop and evolve in social settings. The generalizability and ecological validity of this experimental approach hinges on the selected imaging technique being mobile–...

Self-disclosure and the social sharing of emotions facilitate social relationships and can positively affect people's well-being. Nevertheless, individuals might refrain from engaging in these interpersonal communication behaviours with other people, due to socio-emotional barriers, such as shame and stigma. Social robots, free from these human-cen...

Whether in performing arts, sporting, or everyday contexts, when we watch others move, we tend to enjoy bodies moving in synchrony. Our enjoyment of body movements is further enhanced by our own prior experience with performing those movements, or our ‘embodied experience’. The relationships between movement synchrony and enjoyment, as well as embo...

While interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one concern is the extent to which people’s behavioural and emotional engagement might be sustained across time, since during initial interactions with a robot, its novelty is especially salient. This challenge is particularly noteworthy when considering interactions desi...

This study explores the influence of beliefs about intentionality and physical appearance of virtual agents on joint attention; our ability to coordinate our attention with others using social cues (e.g., eye gaze or hand movements). Most studies have examined these cues in isolation, focusing on eye gaze. In a recent study, we developed a cooperat...

We sought to replicate and expand previous work showing that the more human-like a robot appears, the more willing people are to attribute mind-like capabilities and socially engage with it. Forty-two participants played games against a human, a humanoid robot, a mechanoid robot, and a computer algorithm while undergoing functional neuroimaging. Re...

Self-disclosure facilitates relationships and can have a positive effect on people's well-being. Nevertheless, people might refrain from engaging in self-disclosure and other interpersonal communication activities due to shame and stigma. Social robots, free from judgment, could encourage openness and overcome these barriers. This in-depth narrativ...

While evidence abounds that motor synchrony is a powerful form of social glue for those involved, we have yet to understand how observers perceive motor synchrony: Can observers quantify synchrony accurately? Is synchrony aesthetically pleasing? In two preregistered experiments (n=161 each), we assess how accurately observers can quantify the degre...

Aesthetic appreciation of full-body movements is likely shaped by our cumulative bodily experiences, yet the literature has focused on expertise and familiarity. We ran two experiments exploring individual differences in embodiment and experience with the arts: In Study 1, we explored how participants’ (n=41) abilities to learn a choreography shape...

Self-disclosing to others can benefit emotional well-being, but socio-emotional barriers can limit people’s ability to do so. Self-disclosing towards social robots can help overcome these obstacles as robots lack judgment and can establish rapport. To further understand the influence of affective factors on people’s self-disclosure to social robots...

Social drones are autonomous flying machines designed to operate in inhabited environments. Yet, little is known about how their proximity might impact people’s well-being. This knowledge is critical as drones are often perceived as potential threats due to their design (e.g., visible propellers, unpleasant noise) and capabilities (e.g., moving at...

While still relatively rare, longitudinal hyperscanning studies are exceptionally valuable for documenting changes in inter-brain synchrony, which may in turn underpin how behaviors develop and evolve in social settings. The generalizability and ecological validity of this experimental approach hinges on the selected imaging technique being mobile–...

The potential for robots to support education is being increasingly studied and rapidly realised. However, most research evaluating education robots has neglected to examine the fundamental features that make them more or less effective, given the needs and expectations of learners. This study explored how children’s perceptions, expectations and e...

Understanding how people socially engage with robots is becoming increasingly important as these machines are deployed in social settings. We investigated 70 participants’ situational cooperation tendencies towards a robot using prisoner’s dilemma games, manipulating the incentives for cooperative decisions to be high or low. We predicted that peop...

Clark and Fischer's dismissal of extant human-robot interaction research approaches limits opportunities to understand major variables shaping people's engagement with social robots. Instead, this endeavour categorically requires multidisciplinary approaches. We refute the assumption that people cannot (correctly or incorrectly) represent robots as...

Clark and Fischer's depiction hypothesis is based on examples of western mimetic art. Yet social robots do not depict social interactions, but instead perform them. Similarly, dance and performance art do not rely on depiction. Kinematics and expressivity are better predictors of dance aesthetics and of effective social interactions. In this way, s...

Background: Robots are being designed to alleviate the burden of social isolation and loneliness, particularly among older adults for whom these issues are more widespread. While good intentions underpin these developments, the reality is that many of these robots are abandoned within a short period of time. To encourage the longer-term use and uti...

People often engage in various forms of self-disclosure and social sharing with others when trying to regulate the impact of emotional distress. Here we introduce a novel long-term mediated intervention aimed at supporting informal caregivers to cope with emotional distress via self-disclosing their emotions and needs to a social robot. Research ha...

Openly available natural language generation (NLG) algorithms can generate human-like texts across domains. Given their potential, ethical challenges arise such as being used as a tool for misinformation. It is necessary to understand both how these texts are generated from an algorithmic point of view, and how they are evaluated by a general audie...

The future of human–robot collaboration relies on people’s ability to understand and predict robots' actions. The machine-like appearance of robots, as well as contextual information, may influence people’s ability to anticipate the behaviour of robots. We conducted six separate experiments to investigate how spatial cues and task instructions modu...

Since interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one concern is the extent to which people's behavioural and emotional engagement with robots might develop from initial interactions with a robot, when a robot's novelty is especially salient, and sustained over time. This challenge is particularly noticeable in interacti...

Since interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one concern is the extent to which people’s behavioural and emotional engagement with robots might develop from initial interactions with a robot, when a robot’s novelty is especially salient, and sustained over time. This challenge is particularly noticeable in interacti...

It is well established that observation by an audience can improve performance on various cognitive tasks. More recently, it has come to light that developing motor synchrony with a peer (through interventions such as the mirror game) can also yield collaborative, cognitive, and social benefits. The combined and relative advantages offered by audie...

Since interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one particular concern in this specific area of human-robot interaction (HRI) is the extent to which human users will experience the interactions positively over time, when the robot’s novelty is particularly salient. In the current paper, we investigated users’ experienc...

Is artificial intelligence (AI) changing our culture or creating its own? With advancements in AI and machine learning, artistic creativity is moving to a brave new world of possibility and complexity, while at the same time posing challenging questions, such as what defines something as art, what is the role of human creativity in an automated wor...

To facilitate long-term engagement with social robots, emerging evidence suggests that modelling robots on social animals with whom many people form enduring social bonds–specifically, pet dogs–may be useful. However, scientific understanding of the features of pet dogs that are important for establishing and maintaining social bonds remains limite...

Is artificial intelligence (AI) changing our culture or creating its own? With advancements in AI and machine learning, artistic creativity is moving to a brave new world of possibility and complexity, while at the same time posing challenging questions, such as what defines something as art, what is the role of human creativity in an automated wor...

Over millennia, artists have mastered how to exploit the visual form to capture motion’s vitality across a wide range of styles, including conceptual, abstract, and realistic artistic representations. In this chapter, we describe the history of movement representation in art and how implied motion cues can create the impression of dynamism. We disc...

Previously, we identified several behaviors dog owners perceive as important to building and maintaining prosocial bonds between people and their pet dogs. These included (but were not limited to) spontaneous displays of affection and responsiveness. An important next step toward developing and deploying robots as social companions is to now explor...

Is art appreciation universal? Previous evidence suggests a general preference for representational art over abstract art, and a tendency to like art originating from one’s own culture more than another culture (an ingroup bias), modulated by art expertise. However, claims about universality are difficult given that most research has focused on Wes...

Resonance, a powerful and pervasive phenomenon, appears to play a major role in human interactions. This article investigates the relationship between the physical mechanism of resonance and the human experience of resonance, and considers possibilities for enhancing the experience of resonance within human–robot interactions. We first introduce re...

Informal caregivers often struggle in managing to cope with both the stress and the practical demands of the caregiving situation. It has been suggested that digital solutions might be useful to monitor caregivers’ health and well-being, by providing early intervention and support. Given the importance of self-disclosure for psychological health, h...

The study explores the impact of robots' emotional displays on people's tendency to cooperate with a robot opponent in prisoner's dilemma games. Participants played iterated prisoner's dilemma games with a non-expressive robot (as a measure of cooperative baseline), followed by an angry, and a sad robot, in turn. Based on the Emotion as Social Info...

Openly available natural language generation (NLG) algorithms can generate human-like texts across multiple domains. Given the increasing potential of NLG algorithms, many ethical challenges arise such as being used as a tool for misinformation. It is necessary to understand not just how these texts are generated from an algorithmic point of view,...

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with profound public health impact due to its high prevalence, chronic nature, accompanying functional impairment, and frequently occurring comorbidities. Early PTSD symptoms, often observed shortly after trauma exposure, abate with time in the majority of those who initially ex...

Is art appreciation universal? Previous evidence suggests a general preference for representational art over abstract art, and a tendency to like art originating from one’s own culture more than another culture (an ingroup bias), modulated by art expertise. However, claims about universality are difficult given that most research has focused on Wes...

Is artificial intelligence (AI) changing our culture or creating its own? With advancements in AI and machine learning, artistic creativity is moving to a brave new world of possibility and complexity, while at the same time posing challenging questions, such as what defines something as art, what is the role of human creativity in an automated wor...

What leads us to enjoy watching others’ bodies in motion? In this chapter, the authors discuss their motivation to explore how our bodily experiences, especially in the form of dance training, shape our perceptions and preferences for watching others move, especially in dance contexts. They highlight findings from several studies that they conducte...

Neuroscience joins the long history of discussions about aesthetics in psychology, philosophy, art history, and the creative arts. In this volume, leading scholars in this nascent field reflect on the promise of neuroaesthetics to enrich our understanding of this universal yet diverse facet of human experience. The volume will inform and stimulate...

In everyday life, we often observe and learn from interactions between other individuals—so-called third-party encounters. As robots are poised to become an increasingly familiar presence in our daily lives, third-party encounters between other people and robots might offer a valuable approach to influence people’s behaviors and attitudes towards r...

To facilitate long-term engagement with social robots, emerging evidence suggests that modelling robots on social animals with whom many people form enduring social bonds – specifically, pet dogs – may be useful. However, scientific understanding of the features of pet dogs that are important for establishing and maintaining social bonds remains li...

Engagement with art represents one of the few areas in society where people come together to share experiences even when they have radically different worldviews. If all human beings share a common capacity for experiencing and appreciating artworks, it is plausible that the underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms are also common across cultures...

Robotic agents designed to assist people across a variety of social and service settings are becoming increasingly prevalent across the world. Here we synthesise two decades of empirical evidence from human–robot interaction (HRI) research to focus on cultural influences on expectations towards and responses to social robots, as well as the utility...

Intergroup dynamics shape the ways in which we interact with other people. We feel more empathy towards ingroup members compared to outgroup members, and can even feel pleasure when an outgroup member experiences misfortune, known as schadenfreude. Here, we test the extent to which these intergroup biases emerge during interactions with robots. We...

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a severe psychiatric disorder with profound public health impact due to its high prevalence, chronic nature, accompanying functional impairment, and frequently occurring comorbidities. Early PTSD symptoms, often observed shortly after trauma exposure, subside in most of individuals initially expressing them...

One major challenge faced by human-robot interaction (HRI) researchers is replicating and extending new findings, to better understand how short, constrained laboratory manipulations might translate to real-world scenarios. Since interactions with social robots are novel and exciting for many people, one particular concern is the extent to which pe...

Perceiving art is known to elicit motor cortex activation in an observer's brain. This motor activation has often been attributed to a covert approach response associated with the emotional valence of an art piece (emotional reaction hypothesis). However, recent accounts have proposed that aesthetic experiences could be grounded in the motor simula...

The process of understanding the minds of other people, such as their emotions and intentions, is mimicked when individuals try to understand an artificial mind. The assumption is that anthropomorphism, attributing human-like characteristics to non-human agents and objects, is an analogue to theory-of-mind, the ability to infer mental states of oth...

In everyday life, we often observe and learn from interactions between other individuals –– so-called third-party encounters. As robots are poised to become an increasingly familiar presence in our daily lives, third-party encounters between other people and robots might offer a valuable approach to influence people’s behaviours and attitudes towar...