Dawson Petersen, PhD

About Me

Dawson Petersen is a postdoctoral Fritz Fellow in Tech & Society at Georgetown University. His interdisciplinary research program investigates anthropomorphism in language and thought—with a particular focus on how anthropomorphic language affects readers’ perceptions of AI systems. At Georgetown University, he joins Nathan Schneider (Department of Linguistics & Department of Computer Science) and Kevin Tobia (Georgetown Law) to apply cognitve science and psycholinguistic methods to inform experimental jurisprudence. Dawson holds a PhD and an MA in Linguistics from the University of South Carolina, and BS in Interdisciplinary Studies from North Greenville University.

Dissertation Abstract

Over the past decade, deep learning AI systems have gone from academic obscurity to near cultural centrality in the developed world. As these technologies become increasingly integrated into daily life, there is growing cause for concern about AI anthropomorphism—i.e., the perception of AIs as more human than they really are. Despite the potential risks, AI developers continue to market their technologies using agentive language that seems to be designed to encourage anthropomorphism. The current dissertation utilizes behavioral and eye-tracking methods to examine the relationship between agentive linguistic framing and AI anthropomorphism in both controlled judgments and automatic inferences. The results show that exposure to agentive linguistic framing can 1) increase the perceived responsibility of AIs for both negative and positive outcomes, 2) cause readers to see AIs as agents rather than objects, as evidenced by a decrease in negative agency bias, 3) and facilitate the processing of animate verbs with AI subjects. Overall, these findings show that agentive linguistic framing has a high risk of causing unconscious AI anthropomorphism, especially for readers with preexisting anthropomorphic beliefs.

MA Thesis Abstract

Talmy argues that causal sentences are understood by reference to basic image schemas, such as Starting and Stopping. The current study employs a priming paradigm in which participants experience a force dynamic prime followed by self-paced reading of a sentence with a causative verb which referenced a compatible or incompatible force dynamic schema. In order to strengthen the priming manipulation, the primes used were short interactive 2D computer games created using Unity and the Unity Experiment Framework as primes (Brookes et al., 2019). In each game, participants had to either prevent or cause an object to move. Following the prime, participants read sentences that described events with the same or the opposite force dynamic schema. Sentences were presented region by region, and the response time for each region was recorded. I predicted that participants would respond more quickly when the target sentence matches the interactive force dynamic prime. However, the results show no such priming effects, which suggests either that force dynamic schemas are not used in online sentence comprehension or that their influence is weak enough that an even stronger manipulation is required to uncover it.

News

10/22/25 - I successfully defended my disseration “Anthropomorphism in Language and Thought: The Effect of Agentive Linguistic Framing on Readers’ Perceptions of AI Animacy” under the supervision of Amit Almor, Anne Bezuidenhout, Rutvik H. Desai, and Valerie L. Shalin.

04/05/25 - My paper “Agentive linguistic framing affects responsibility assignments towards AIs and their creators” has been published by Frontiers in Psychology.

03/27/25 - I am presenting a poster entitled “Grammatical Metaphor Increases AI-Animacy Perception in Online Sentence Processing” at the Society for Human Sentence Processing in the University of Maryland.

03/13/25 - My paper “Agentive linguistic framing affects responsibility assignments towards AIs and their creators” was provisionally accepted by Frontiers in Psychology.

09/12/24 - I received funding from the UofSC Graduate School to present my paper “Anthropomorphism Mediates the Algorithm Outrage Deficit” at the 65th meeting of the Psychonomic Society in New York City.

07/02/24 - I received the NSF Linguistics Program’s Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Research Grant.

Grants

Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Research Grant
NSF Linguistics Program, 2024
$17,817

Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Dissertation Fellowship
University of South Carolina, 2024
$40,000

SPARC Graduate Research Grant
University of South Carolina, 2024
$4,800

Publications

Petersen, D. (2025). Anthropomorphism in language and thought: The effect of agentive linguistic framing on readers’ perceptions of AI animacy [Dissertation].

Petersen, D. & Almor, A. (2025). Agentive linguistic framing affects responsibility assignments towards AIs and their creators. Frontiers in Psychology—Cognitive Science, 16. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1498958

Petersen, D., Almor, A. & Shalin, V. L. (2024). Linguistic framing affects moral responsibility assignments towards AIs and their creators. Proceedings of Agency and Intentions in Language 4.
https://ail-workshop.github.io/AIL4-Workshop/program.html
AIL4 Proceedings Paper.pdf

Petersen, D. & Almor, A. (2023). Anthropomorphism, not depiction, explains interaction with social robots. [Peer commentary on the paper “Social robots as depictions of social agents” by H. H. Clark & K. Fischer]. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 46.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X22001698

Petersen, D. (2022). The role of force dynamic schemas in the comprehension of causal language [MA thesis].
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/6800/

Petersen, D. (2018). Embodied simulation in response to semantic priming [Unpublished undergraduate thesis].

Courses Taught

Linguistics 300: Introduction to Language Sciences, University of South Carolina
Upper level survey of Linguistics, Cross-listed in Psychology and Anthropology

Linguistics 101: Introduction to Language, University of South Carolina
Introductory level survey of Linguistics

English 101: Critical Reading and Composition, University of South Carolina

English 102: Composition and Rhetoric, University of South Carolina

Conference and Workshop Organizing

Lead Workshop Organizer
Experimental Pragmatics: Bridging Theory and Praxis
with invited speakers: Mira Ariel and Anna Papafragou
American Pragmatics Association, November 11, 2023