Bertram F. Malle earned Master’s degrees in philosophy/linguistics (1987) and psychology (1989) at the University of Graz, Austria. After coming to the United States in 1990, he received his Ph.D. at Stanford University in 1995 and joined the University of Oregon Psychology Department. Since 2008 he is Professor in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. He received the Society of Experimental Social Psychology (SESP) Outstanding Dissertation award, an NSF CAREER award, and is co-recipient of the 2019 SESP Scientific Impact Award. He is past president of the Society of Philosophy and Psychology and a Fellow of SESP, APS, SPSP, and the Cognitive Science Society. Malle’s research focuses on moral psychology, social cognition, and human-machine interaction. He has published over 170 scientific papers and several books, including: Intentions and intentionality (with L. J. Moses and D. A. Baldwin, eds.), MIT Press, 2001; How the Mind Explains Behavior, MIT Press, 2004; and Other minds (with S. D. Hodges, eds.), Guilford Press, 2005, and Handbook of Moral Psychology (with P. Robbins, eds), Cambridge University Press (in press).
| Malle, Bertram F., Guglielmo, Steve, Voiklis, John, Monroe, Andrew E. "Cognitive Blame Is Socially Shaped." Current Directions in Psychological Science, vol. 31, no. 2, 2022, pp. 169-176. |
| Zhao, Xuan, Malle, Bertram F. "Spontaneous perspective taking toward robots: The unique impact of humanlike appearance." Cognition, vol. 224, 2022, pp. 105076. |
| Law, Theresa, Malle, Bertram F., Scheutz, Matthias. "A Touching Connection: How Observing Robotic Touch Can Affect Human Trust in a Robot." International Journal of Social Robotics, vol. 13, no. 8, 2021, pp. 2003-2019. |
| Komatsu, Takanori, Malle, Bertram F., Scheutz, Matthias. "Blaming the Reluctant Robot." Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2021. |
| Ullman, Daniel, Aladia, Salomi, Malle, Bertram F. "Challenges and Opportunities for Replication Science in HRI." Proceedings of the 2021 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction, 2021. |
| Ullman, Daniel, Phillips, Elizabeth, Aladia, Salomi, Haas, Peter, Fowler, Halle S., Iqbal, Iman S., Mi, Kaitlyn L., Riches, Isabel W., Omori, Maya, Malle, Bertram F. "Evaluating Psychosocial Support Provided by an Augmented Reality Device for Children With Type 1 Diabetes." Proceedings of the International Symposium on Human Factors and Ergonomics in Health Care, vol. 10, no. 1, 2021, pp. 126-130. |
| De Graaf, Maartje M. A., Dragan, Anca, Malle, Bertram F., Ziemke, Tom. "Introduction to the Special Issue on Explainable Robotic Systems." ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction, vol. 10, no. 3, 2021, pp. 1-4. |
| Malle, Bertram F. "Moral Judgments." Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 72, no. 1, 2021, pp. 293-318. |
| Malle BF. "What the mind is." Nature Human Behaviour, vol. 5, no. 10, 2021, pp. 1269-1270. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Rosen, Eric, Chi, Vivienne B., Berg, Matthew, Haas, Peter. "A General Methodology for Teaching Norms to Social Robots." 2020 29th IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2020. |
| Guglielmo S, Malle BF. "Asymmetric morality: Blame is more differentiated and more extreme than praise." PLoS ONE, vol. 14, no. 3, 2019, pp. e0213544. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Bello, Paul, Scheutz, Matthias. "Requirements for an Artificial Agent with Norm Competence." Proceedings of the 2019 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society, 2019. |
| de Graaf, Maartje M.A., Malle, Bertram F., Dragan, Anca, Ziemke, Tom. "Explainable Robotic Systems." Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '18, 2018. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Scheutz, Matthias. "Learning How to Behave." Handbuch Maschinenethik, 2018, pp. 1-24. |
| Monroe AE, Malle BF. "People systematically update moral judgments of blame." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2018. |
| de Graaf, Maartje M. A., Malle, Bertram F. "People's Judgments of Human and Robot Behaviors." Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '18, 2018. |
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Malle, B. F., Voiklis, J., & Kim, B.
"Understanding contempt against the background of blame." The Moral Psychology of Contempt, edited by M. Mason, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, pp. 79-105.
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| Ullman, Daniel, Malle, Bertram F. "What Does it Mean to Trust a Robot?." Companion of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '18, 2018. |
| Phillips, Elizabeth, Zhao, Xuan, Ullman, Daniel, Malle, Bertram F. "What is Human-like?." Proceedings of the 2018 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction - HRI '18, 2018. |
| Guglielmo, Steve, Malle, Bertram F. "Information-Acquisition Processes in Moral Judgments of Blame." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 43, no. 7, 2017, pp. 957-971. |
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Voiklis, J., & Malle, B. F.
"Moral cognition and its basis in social cognition and social regulation." Atlas of Moral Psychology, edited by K. Gray and J. Graham, New York, NY, Guilford Press, 2017, pp. 108-120.
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| Shaw, Jordan A., Bryant, Lauren K., Malle, Bertram F., Povinelli, Daniel J., Pruett, John R. "The relationship between joint attention and theory of mind in neurotypical adults." Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 51, 2017, pp. 268-278. |
| Monroe, Andrew E., Malle, Bertram F. "Two paths to blame: Intentionality directs moral information processing along two distinct tracks." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 146, no. 1, 2017, pp. 123-133. |
| Korman, J., Malle, B. F. "Grasping for Traits or Reasons? How People Grapple With Puzzling Social Behaviors." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 42, no. 11, 2016, pp. 1451-1465. |
| Voiklis, John, Kim, Boyoung, Cusimano, Corey, Malle, Bertram F. "Moral judgments of human vs. robot agents." 2016 25th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN), 2016. |
| Monroe, Andrew E., Brady, Garrett L., Malle, Bertram F. "This Isn’t the Free Will Worth Looking For." Social Psychological and Personality Science, vol. 8, no. 2, 2016, pp. 191-199. |
| Ülkümen, Gülden, Fox, Craig R., Malle, Bertram F. "Two dimensions of subjective uncertainty: Clues from natural language." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, vol. 145, no. 10, 2016, pp. 1280-1297. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Scheutz, Matthias, Forlizzi, Jodi, Voiklis, John. "Which robot am I thinking about? The impact of action and appearance on people's evaluations of a moral robot." 2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2016. |
| TENENBAUM, ELENA J., SOBEL, DAVID M., SHEINKOPF, STEPHEN J., MALLE, BERTRAM F., MORGAN, JAMES L. "Attention to the mouth and gaze following in infancy predict language development." Journal of Child Language, vol. 42, no. 6, 2015, pp. 1173-1190. |
| Tenenbaum EJ, Sobel DM, Sheinkopf SJ, Malle BF, Morgan JL. "Attention to the mouth and gaze following in infancy predict language development - CORRIGENDUM." Journal of Child Language, vol. 42, no. 6, 2015, pp. 1408. |
| Zhao, Xuan, Cusimano, Corey, Malle, Bertram F. "Do People Spontaneously Take a Robot's Visual Perspective?." Proceedings of the Tenth Annual ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction Extended Abstracts - HRI'15 Extended Abstracts, 2015. |
| Malle, Bertram F. "Integrating robot ethics and machine morality: the study and design of moral competence in robots." Ethics and Information Technology, vol. 18, no. 4, 2015, pp. 243-256. |
| Korman, Joanna, Voiklis, John, Malle, Bertram F. "The social life of cognition." Cognition, vol. 135, 2015, pp. 30-35. |
| Scheutz, Matthias, Malle, Bertram F. "Think and do the right thing": A Plea for morally competent autonomous robots." 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Science, Technology and Engineering, 2014. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Guglielmo, Steve, Monroe, Andrew E. "A Theory of Blame." Psychological Inquiry, vol. 25, no. 2, 2014, pp. 147-186. |
| Monroe, Andrew E., Dillon, Kyle D., Malle, Bertram F. "Bringing free will down to Earth: People’s psychological concept of free will and its role in moral judgment." Consciousness and Cognition, vol. 27, 2014, pp. 100-108. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Scheutz, Matthias. "Moral competence in social robots." 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Ethics in Science, Technology and Engineering, 2014. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Monroe, Andrew E., Guglielmo, Steve. "Paths to Blame and Paths to Convergence." Psychological Inquiry, vol. 25, no. 2, 2014, pp. 251-260. |
| Roskies, Adina L., Malle, Bertram F. "A Strawsonian look at desert." Philosophical Explorations, vol. 16, no. 2, 2013, pp. 133-152. |
| Markowitz, Ezra M., Malle, Bertram F. "Did You Just See That? Making Sense of Environmentally Relevant Behavior." Ecopsychology, vol. 4, no. 1, 2012, pp. 37-50. |
| Tenenbaum, Elena J., Shah, Rajesh J., Sobel, David M., Malle, Bertram F., Morgan, James L. "Increased Focus on the Mouth Among Infants in the First Year of Life: A Longitudinal Eye-Tracking Study." Infancy, vol. 18, no. 4, 2012, pp. 534-553. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Holbrook, Jess. "Is there a hierarchy of social inferences? The likelihood and speed of inferring intentionality, mind, and personality." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 102, no. 4, 2012, pp. 661-684. |
| Monroe, Andrew E., Guglielmo, Steve, Malle, Bertram F. "Morality Goes Beyond Mind Perception." Psychological Inquiry, vol. 23, no. 2, 2012, pp. 179-184. |
| Cook, Jonathan E., Calcagno, Justine E., Arrow, Holly, Malle, Bertram F. "Friendship trumps ethnicity (but not sexual orientation): Comfort and discomfort in inter-group interactions." British Journal of Social Psychology, vol. 51, no. 2, 2011, pp. 273-289. |
| Cook, J. E., Arrow, H., Malle, B. F. "The Effect of Feeling Stereotyped on Social Power and Inhibition." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 37, no. 2, 2011, pp. 165-180. |
| Guglielmo, S., Malle, B. F. "Can Unintended Side Effects Be Intentional? Resolving a Controversy Over Intentionality and Morality." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, vol. 36, no. 12, 2010, pp. 1635-1647. |
| Guglielmo, Steve, Malle, Bertram F. "Enough skill to kill: Intentionality judgments and the moral valence of action." Cognition, vol. 117, no. 2, 2010, pp. 139-150. |
| Begeer, Sander, Malle, Bertram F., Nieuwland, Mante S., Keysar, Boaz. "Using Theory of Mind to represent and take part in social interactions: Comparing individuals with high-functioning autism and typically developing controls." European Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 7, no. 1, 2010, pp. 104-122. |
| Dieckmann, Nathan F., Malle, Bertram F., Bodner, Todd E. "An empirical assessment of meta-analytic practice." Review of General Psychology, vol. 13, no. 2, 2009, pp. 101-115. |
| Guglielmo, Steve, Monroe, Andrew E., Malle, Bertram F. "At the Heart of Morality Lies Folk Psychology." Inquiry, vol. 52, no. 5, 2009, pp. 449-466. |
| Monroe, Andrew E., Malle, Bertram F. "From Uncaused Will to Conscious Choice: The Need to Study, Not Speculate About People’s Folk Concept of Free Will." Review of Philosophy and Psychology, vol. 1, no. 2, 2009, pp. 211-224. |
| Malle, Bertram F. "Fritz Heider’s Legacy." Social Psychology, vol. 39, no. 3, 2008, pp. 163-173. |
| Malle, Bertram F., Knobe, Joshua M., Nelson, Sarah E. "Actor-observer asymmetries in explanations of behavior: New answers to an old question." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 93, no. 4, 2007, pp. 491-514. |
| Malle, Bertram, Guglielmo, Steven. "Directions and Challenges in Studying Folk Concepts and Folk Judgments." Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 6, no. 1, 2006, pp. 321-329. |
| Malle, Bertram. "Intentionality, Morality, and Their Relationship in Human Judgment." Journal of Cognition and Culture, vol. 6, no. 1, 2006, pp. 87-112. |
| Malle, Bertram F. "The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution: A (surprising) meta-analysis." Psychological Bulletin, vol. 132, no. 6, 2006, pp. 895-919. |
| Bruininks, Patricia, Malle, Bertram F. "Distinguishing Hope from Optimism and Related Affective States." Motivation and Emotion, vol. 29, no. 4, 2005, pp. 324-352. |
| Malle BF, Nelson SE. "Judging mens rea: the tension between folk concepts and legal concepts of intentionality." Behavioral Sciences & the Law, vol. 21, no. 5, 2003, pp. 563-80. |
| O'Laughlin MJ, Malle BF. "How people explain actions performed by groups and individuals." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 82, no. 1, 2002, pp. 33-48. |
| Malle BF, Pearce GE. "Attention to behavioral events during interaction: two actor-observer gaps and three attempts to close them." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 81, no. 2, 2001, pp. 278-94. |
| Malle BF, Knobe J, O'Laughlin MJ, Pearce GE, Nelson SE. "Conceptual structure and social functions of behavior explanations: beyond person--situation attributions." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 79, no. 3, 2000, pp. 309-26. |
| Malle BF. "How people explain behavior: a new theoretical framework." Personality and social psychology review : an official journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc, vol. 3, no. 1, 1999, pp. 23-48. |
Professor Malle's research examines the cognitive tools that humans bring to social interaction (often called "social cognition"), especially the capacity to recognize intentional actions, make inferences about other people's mental states, and explain people's behavior. A strong focus is also on how those cognitive tools figure in moral judgments, emotions, and behaviors, such blame, praise, and guilt. Increasingly, he applies theories and experimental methods to the questions of human-robot interaction and the appropriate design of robots that are adapted to human psychology.
Department of Defense—Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO), Prototype OTA contract no. W519TC-24-9-2012, Validation of a measure of trust in artificial agents, $215,763.00, 2024-2025
Deloitte and Touche LLP Research Collaboration Agreement, DEFT - Developing and Evaluating a Framework for Trust Assessment (PI). $203,376, 5/2022 - 5/2024.
Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Moral Justification to Foster Human-Machine Trust (co-PI), FA9550-21-1-0359, $997,000. 2021-2024.
Department of Defense MINERVA Research Initiative, The Power of Moral Justifications to Foster Human-Machine Trust and Collaboration (PI), $399,894. Recommended for funding 2/2020, declined because co-PI changed affiliation, which eliminated a grant requirement.
NSF Partnership for Innovation/Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) Award, Next generation robotic intelligence that provides psycho-social support for older adults (PI), IIP-1717701 $999,803, 2017-2020.
Army Research Laboratory, Appropriate calibrations of trust for supporting soldier-robot teaming (co-PI). Subaward T2C2S3D to General Dynamics Land Systems grant PO40282276, under Contract Number W911NF-10-2-0016 to RCTA. $50,000, 2017-2018.
Rhode Island Commerce Corporation, Innovation Voucher in collaboration with Sproutel, Inc., Evaluating psychosocial support provided by Jerry the Bear for Type 1 diabetes (Project leader Malle), $50,000, May 2017- July 2019.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Foundations of Human–Machine Collaboration: Networks of Social and Moral Norms in Human and Artificial Agents (PI), $413,092, April 2016 – January 2017. (Managed as AFOSR FA9550-16-1-0045).
Office of Naval Research (ONR), MURI: Moral competence in computational architectures for robots: Foundations, implementations, and demonstrations (co-PI; M. Scheutz, PI), Brown portion: $1,377,030, 1/2014-12/2019.
Brown University’s Provost’s Office, Humanity-Centered Robotics Initiative (Co-director), $1,020,000, 2015-2020.
Office of Naval Research (ONR), The role of affective phenomena in moral judgment (PI), $713,571, 1/2013-1/2017.
John Templeton Foundation/FSU Research Foundation, Developing a model of the folk concept of free will and its impact on moral judgment (PI), $274,029; 2011-2013.
Mellon Grant, Brown University, $7,000, 2010. (Sponsor for Andrew E. Monroe)
NSF Award: Is there a hierarchy of social inference? Intentionality, mind, and morality (PI), $264,605; 2008-2011.
Army/Department of Defense STTR Subcontract Award: Underlying cognitive processes of leadership behavior and development, (Subcontract PI), $40,000; 2002-2003.
NSF CAREER Award (Faculty Early Career Development): The Folk Theory of Behavior: Implications for Social Perception and Interaction, (PI), $253,312; 1997-2001.
NSF Instrumentation Award: Wireless Laboratory for Interpersonal Cognition, $45,372, 1997. (Co-PIs Malle, John Orbell)
| Year | Degree | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| 1995 | PhD | Stanford University |
| 1989 | MS | University of Graz |
| 1987 | MA | University of Graz |
Fellow (2024-), Cognitive Science Society
Best paper award, Theory and Methods category, International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’21)
Scientific Impact Award (2019), Society of Experimental Social Psychology, for 1994 journal article on social dominance orientation, with Felicia Pratto, Jim Sidanius, and Lisa Stallworth
Invited Visiting Scholar (October 2018), Carnegie Mellon University
Fellow (2018-), Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP)
Best publication award 2018, Decision Analysis Society for article co-authored with Ülkümen and Fox (2016).
Best paper award, Enabling Knowledge category, International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI ’15)
Fellow (2013-), Association of Psychological Science (APS)
President, Society of Philosophy and Psychology, 2009-2010
| Name | Title |
|---|---|
| Bahar, R | Professor Emerita of Engineering, Professor Emerita of Computer Science, Adjunct Professor of Engineering |
| Littman, Michael | University Professor of Computer Science |
| Morgan, James | Professor of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences, Professor of Linguistics |
| Sobel, David | Professor of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences |
Association for Computing and Machinery, ACM (Member)
Association of Psychological Science, APS (Fellow)
Cognitive Science Society (Member)
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE (Member),
International Association for Computation and Philosophy, IACAP (Life-time member)
Society for Personality and Social Psychology, SPSP (Fellow)
Society of Experimental Social Psychology, SESP (Fellow)
Society of Philosophy and Psychology, SPP (Past president, life-time member)
Psi Chi National Honors Society (Member)
Courses taught at Brown since 2009:
Blame and Punishment
Foundations of Advanced Statistics
Multivariate Statistics
Social Psychology
Social Cognitive Science
Graduate Proseminar
Courses taught at the University of Oregon between 1995 and 2008:
Cognitive Science
Intentionality
Judgment and Decision Making
Moral Sentiments
Multivariate Statistics
Other Minds
Psychology and the Social World
Self and Others
Social Cognitive Science
Social Psychology
| CLPS 0700 - Social Psychology |
| CLPS 1750 - Blame and Punishment |
| CLPS 1755 - Moral Psychology |
| CLPS 2908 - Multivariate Statistical Techniques |
| CLPS 2980 - Foundations of Advanced Statistics |
