Maria Miceli, a social psychologist with a background in philosophy, is a senior researcher at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council (ISTC-CNR) in Rome, where she is a member of the Goal-Oriented Agents Lab. Her research activity focuses on the cognitive aspects of social mechanisms and processes and their interplay with motivational and ... Read moreemotional components, and on modelling architectures of intelligent autonomous agents endowed with social capabilities. Topics of interest include: kinds and processes of evaluation; values; self-esteem and defense strategies; loneliness; dependence, help-giving and help-seeking; loss of motivation; helplessness and crying; guilt and guilt-inducement strategies; anticipation and related emotions; social comparison and related emotions; persuasion strategies, with special reference to emotional strategies; comfort as a special form of social support; forgiveness. Cristiano Castelfranchi is professor of economical psychology at the LUISS University in Rome (2007-present), and full professor of social psychology at the Uninettuno international telematic university (2008-present). He has been full professor of general psychology at the University of Siena (2001-2011), and director of the ISTC-CNR in Rome (2002-2011), where he is presently coordinator of the Goal-Oriented Agents Lab. A cognitive scientist with a background in linguistics and psychology, he is also active in the multi-agent systems and social simulation communities. He introduced the study of goal-directed action and normative behavior in distributed artificial intelligence, and at the same time championed the use of the autonomous agents paradigm and social simulation in cognitive psychology and social science. Show Less