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2018
"Inclusion in Practice" workshop released at UChicago (2018.10.18)
After 12 months of hard work and countless reiterations, our Second Science Project (SSP) workshop, "Inclusion in Practice: Understanding Interpersonal Differences," is finally released to the UChicago audience as a facilitator training packet! By guiding participants through four behavioral science-based improvisational exercises, this two-hour workshop aims to help participants cultivate skills and awareness in navigating a central challenge of today’s world—conflicting viewpoints.
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2018
New ABOT Website (2018.07.20)
Our new ABOT Database website is launched! In addition to the major functionalities from the previous version (e.g., robot list with human-likeness scores, a preview of 200 robots, and a feature-based human-likeness predictor, the new website also features advanced search and filter capacities, integrated robot information in preview windows, and radar graphs visually representing each robots human-likeness profile! We have also improved our image collection (dated 05/20/2018) and streamlined the human-likeness predictor.
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2018
Best Paper Award Runner-Up, HRI'18 (2018.03.08)
Our HRI paper, "What is human-like?: Decomposing robot human-like appearance using the Anthropomorphic roBOT (ABOT) Database", is nominated for Best Paper Award in Theory and Methods in HRI at the 13th Annual International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction!
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2018
Research talk on human-like robots at SPSP (2018.03.02)
I gave a talk at the "Merging Psychology and Robotics" Symposium in the 2018 SPSP Convention. The talk is entitled, "The Appeal of Human-Likeness: Spontaneous Visual Perspective Taking Triggered by Mere Human Resemblance" and is featured in the SPSP newsletter!
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2018
Research talk at SPSP "Inside the Grant Panel" competition (2018.03.02)
In a talk entitled "The Science and Story behind Feeling Another Human's Heartbeat" at this year's SPSP "Inside the Grant Panel" competition, I shared some research findings and personal experiences with the audience based on my award-winning proposal in last year's Grant Competition.
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2017
New adventure at Chicago Booth! (2018.03.02)
I moved! I'm joining the University of Chicago Booth School of Business as a postdoctoral research fellow this fall! In addition to conducting research independently and collaborating with world-class researchers, I will be able to collaborate with the Second City to explore new ways to bridge acting & improvisation techniques with behavioral research!
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2017
"Leading with Empathy" course website released (2017.08.30)
After teaching "Leading with Empathy" for three years, I built a public website based on this course to share many of my favorite empathy-related books, videos, exercises, and other resources.
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2017
First-prize award at SPSP Live Grant Competition (2017.01.20)
I won the first prize of the Q&pAy event, a live grant competition at the 2017 Annual Convention of SPSP! Many thanks to five judges and the audience for a very fun time at the competition! Here you can read the ideas and inspirations behind this project in an interview with SPSP on my research proposal, "Bonding in a Heartbeat: Can Feeling Others' Heartbeat Increase Empathy and Prosocial Behavior."
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2016
Grand travel award at the inaugural Psychology of Technology Preconference (2016.12.9)
I am honored to receive the grand travel award at the inaugural Psychology of Technology preconference at the 2017 Annual Convention of SPSP. I deeply appreciate the dedication and hard work of the organizers, Kostadin Kushlev, Juliana Schroder, and Nate Fast—because of their initiative, researchers on technology & psychology now have a platform to share their new findings at SPSP!
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2016
Research talk to Brown community at "Research Matters!"(2016.11.5)
At Brown Graduate School's "Research Matters!" talk event, I explained why and how social cognitive psychologists like myself are beginning to study robots. This 6-minute talk, entitled, “Through the Eyes of a Robot,” is now available on Youtube!
Here is one of Xuan's all-time favorite quotes by Carl Popper: "Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying. In return, he owes it to his fellow men (or 'to society') to represent the results of his study as simply, clearly and modestly as he can."