Sari Nijssen, MSc PhD

After obtaining her MSc (Dist.) in Cognitive Science at University College London (UK), Sari Nijssen completed her PhD in 2021 at Radboud University (the Netherlands). In her PhD project, Sari investigated the role of anthropomorphism in human-robot interaction. Upon completion of her PhD project, she worked as Assistant Professor investigating the psychology of sustainability at Radboud University. Sari has now joined the Environmental Psychology Group at the University of Vienna with a special interest in psychological moderators of pro-environmental behavior. In her research, she employs a wide range of methods, including panel surveys, behavioral lab experiments, neurophysiological experiments, and RCTs.

Besides her academic career, Sari has been committed to the implementation of psychological insights in society. Alongside her academic appointments, she has worked as a freelance behavioural consultant for various organisations and co-founded the non-profit Behavior Change Foundation, which is dedicated to employing psychological insights to address societal issues in the Global South.

 Curriculum Vitae

PDF (March 2022)

  • Nijssen, S.R.R., Bosse, T., Paulus, M., & Müller, B.C.N. (2021). You, robot? The role of anthropomorphic emotion attributions in children’s sharing with a robot. Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 30, 100319. doi.org/10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.100319

  • Nijssen, S.R.R., Pletti, C., Müller, B.C.N., & Paulus, M. (2021). Does agency matter? Neural processing of robotic movements in 4- and 8-year olds. Neuropsychologia, 157, 107853. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107853
  • Nijssen, S.R.R., Bosse, T., Paulus, M., & Müller, B.C.N. (2020). Do we take a robot’s needs into account? The effect of humanization on pro-social considerations towards other human beings and robots. Cyberpsycholoy, Behavior, and Social Networking, 24(5), 332-336. doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0035
  • Müller, B.C.N., Gao, X., Nijssen, S.R.R., & Damen, T. (2020). I, Robot: How human appearance and mind attribution relate to the perceived dangers of robots. International Journal of Social Robotics. doi.org/10.1007/s12369-020-00663-8
  • Nijssen, S.R.R., Müller, B.C.N., van Baaren, R.B., & Paulus, M. (2019). Saving the robot or saving the human: Robots who feel, deserve moral care. Social Cognition, 37(1), 41-56. doi.org/10.1521/soco.2019.37.1.41
  • Müller, B.C.N., Chen, S., Nijssen. S.R.R., & Kühn, S. (2018). How (not) to increase elderly’s tendency to anthropomorphise in serious games. PLoS ONE, 13(7), e0199948. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199948
  • Nijssen, S.R.R., Schaap, G., & Verheijen, G.P. (2018). Has your smartphone replaced your brain? Construction and validation of the Extended Mind Questionnaire (XMQ). PLoS ONE, 13(8), e0202188. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202188
  • Vesper, C., Abramova, E. Bütepage, J., Ciardo, F., Crossey, B., Effenberg, A., Hristova, D., Karlinsky, A., McEllin, L., Nijssen, S.R.R., Schmitz, L. & Wahn, B. (2017). Joint action: Mental representation, shared Information and general mechanisms for coordinating with others. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 2039. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.02039