In just three minutes, I introduced the heart of my research, the question at the center of everything I’ve been studying, and one that keeps circling back, asking to be heard.
What does it mean to feel something for a robot… and have it feel like that feeling is returned?
The talk explores how emotional bonds form between humans and social robots, not by accident, but through affective transference, a process of feeling with, not just about, our machines.
To help explain it, I introduced a new framework: the Personified Affective Transference Model (PATM). It maps out the emotional circuitry behind these relationships, the names we give, the personalities we imagine, the routines we build, and the strange but real reciprocity we perceive.
It’s about more than technology.
It’s about what it means to connect in an age where machines can respond, sometimes eerily well, to our joy, our loneliness, our need to be seen.
This award means a lot. But the real win is opening a door for us to talk, honestly, emotionally, and bravely, about what these relationships mean, and what they’re becoming.
More soon. The conversation is just beginning.