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Benedek Kurdi

@benedek.bsky.social

3.1K followers 2.2K following 260 posts

Experimental psychologist studying social learning and memory, assistant professor @psychillinois.bsky.social, SAB chair @projectimplicit.bsky.social, AE at JEP:G, immigrant, 🏳️‍🌈, he/him

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Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · Jun 21

Paper in @pnas.org in which @d-melnikoff.bsky.social and I provide evidence for model-based effects on automatic evaluation. This was a super fun “adversarial” collaboration with 0 adversariality. It may have been nice to be right, but getting it right is nearly as nice: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Joshua Conrad Jackson @joshcjackson.bsky.social · 21h

🚨Historical Psych Pre-Conference🚨

We have a great lineup of speakers for the #SPSP2026 edition!

Submit your poster or data blitz abstract by Oct. 23 (link below!). Open to folks from any career stage

Any research on psychological change or historical context of social psych is welcome!

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Pierce Ekstrom @pierceekstrom.bsky.social · 1d

We're recruiting PhD students to join us at Nebraska! Spreading word:

Whether you (or your student's) current home is in Psych or PoliSci, if you're interested in political psych, you could be a great fit.

I run a joint lab (www.pierceekstrom.com/ekstromlab) with Ingrid Haas (paclab.unl.edu). 1/3

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Brandon Woo @brandonwoo.bsky.social · 1d

New paper in Open Mind, with @emmayu23.bsky.social, Megan Richardson, and @ashleyjthomas.bsky.social! We find that by 6 years of age, children think that close friends know the content of each other’s minds.

direct.mit.edu/opmi/article...

@openmindjournal.bsky.social

Developing Intuitions That Close Friends Know the Content of Each Other’s Minds

Abstract. To maintain and develop close relationships, people need to accurately represent the minds of their social partners. Although studies have characterized many aspects of children’s intuitive ...

direct.mit.edu

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Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · 1d

These numbers are so crazy, and I don't think the situation will improve anytime soon... 😢

Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Nour Kteily @nourkteily.bsky.social · 1d

@elijfinkel.bsky.social
& I are recruiting a postdoc in the #LitowitzCenter for Enlightened Disagreement at Northwestern University. We seek research excellence regarding navigating conflict.

Application deadline: Nov. 17.

Salary: ~$80k.

facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu/apply/MjQzNw==

Northwestern Faculty Search -

facultyrecruiting.northwestern.edu

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Zoe Liberman @zoeliberman.bsky.social · 6d

Spread the word: I'm looking to recruit a PhD student for Fall 2026 to @ucsb.bsky.social! Reach out if you are applying this cycle and hoping to study infant and child social cognition, specifically expectations about friendship and/or groups. Bonus: live in paradise! And.. 1/3

UCSB Campus. Meadow in the foreground with Storke Tower and mountains in the distance

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Pam Davis-Kean, PhD @umpamdk.bsky.social · 6d

@psychscience.bsky.social Submission site for Barcelona 2026 opens Oct. 30th!!! Join us in Spain for the first APS to be held outside the U.S. Many new ways to interact and to share psychological research being done around the world. www.psychologicalscience.org/conventions/...

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Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · 7d

🥳🥳🥳

Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Jorge Morales @jorge-morales.bsky.social · 7d

Imagine an apple 🍎. Is your mental image more like a picture or more like a thought? In a new preprint led by Morgan McCarty—our lab's wonderful RA—we develop a new approach to this old cognitive science question and find that LLMs excel at tasks thought to be solvable only via visual imagery. 🧵

Artificial Phantasia: Evidence for Propositional Reasoning-Based Mental Imagery in Large Language Models

This study offers a novel approach for benchmarking complex cognitive behavior in artificial systems. Almost universally, Large Language Models (LLMs) perform best on tasks which may be included in th...

arxiv.org

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Felix Thoemmes @felixthoemmes.bsky.social · 9d

Excited to share that I’ll be the incoming Editor of AMPPS. My first priority is building a diverse team of Associate Editors and Editorial Board members. If you’re interested, DM me or add your name via this super simple survey.
cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...
Please share!

Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

cornell.ca1.qualtrics.com

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

ISCON @iscon.bsky.social · 12d

ISCON now seeking nominations for the 2024 Best Social Cognition Paper Award!

This award recognizes an outstanding article (theoretical or empirical) in the field of social cognition. Papers eligible if published in 2024.

More info here: www.socialcognition.net/best-paper-a...

Best Paper Award | Home

www.socialcognition.net

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

ISCON @iscon.bsky.social · 12d

ISCON now seeking nominations for the 2025 Early Career Award! Recognizing a junior scientist who has made outstanding contributions to the understanding of social cognition.

Nominees must have received their PhDs no earlier than 2019.

More info here: www.socialcognition.net/early-career...

Early Career Award | Home

www.socialcognition.net

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Nicole Rust @nicolecrust.bsky.social · 11d

The most universally agreed upon property that sets emotion/affect apart from everything else is valence: approach/avoid; pleasant/unpleasant. Here they target its computation in flies, where you can really figure out the biology. We know so little about how valence is computed by brains. Exciting!

Katrin Vogt @katrinvogt.bsky.social · 11d

How is valence computed in the brain? Check out our new preprint about a single cell that integrates excitatory and inhibitory input across modalities according to valence and impacts behavioral decisions. An exciting collaboration across many labs. Enjoy reading!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A multisensory, bidirectional, valence encoder guides behavioral decisions

A key function of the brain is to categorize sensory cues as repulsive or attractive and respond accordingly. While we have some understanding of how sensory information is processed in the sensory pe...

www.biorxiv.org

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Nora Newcombe @noranewcombe.bsky.social · 11d

New article from the lab, suggesting to me a way in which children's autobiographical memory may differ from their event memory more generally--
Autobiographical memory in children: relation to neural white matter www.tandfonline.com/eprint/B7FZ8...

www.tandfonline.com

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 13d

A memory can be represented at different levels of granularity, from highly specific to generalized.

Different representational formats of a memory can be used at different times or in different contexts, and draw on different neural representations.

doi.org/10.31234/osf...

OSF

doi.org

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Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · 15d

🙋‍♂️

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DongWon OH | 오동원 | 吳東源 @dongwonoh.bsky.social · 15d

Six years in the making, a postdoc project with @freemanjb.bsky.social is finally now out in print. Many thanks to Jon and @hennavartiainen.bsky.social and everyone who made this important work possible.

Jon Freeman @freemanjb.bsky.social · 19d

New findings from my lab in Nature Communications suggest that racial stereotypes can lead the brain's perceptual system to temporarily "see" weapons where they don't exist.

Led by: @dongwonoh.bsky.social

Paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

(1/6)

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Tomer Ullman @tomerullman.bsky.social · 15d

Shorthand version of the paper: telling people that "Themaglin is associated with an increased probability of Pneuben” makes people think that Themaglin causes Pneuben.

(or maybe it is just associated with an increased probability of that inference?)

Sam Gershman @gershbrain.bsky.social · 15d

Timely reminder that 'associative' language leads lay people to confuse correlation and causation, as @tomerullman.bsky.social and I showed a few years ago.
journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Snapshot from the BBC:
www.bbc.com/news/article...

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Ava Ma de Sousa @avamadesousa.bsky.social · Aug 28

So excited to share that my first first-author paper is out in
@commspsychol.nature.com
🎉

In a mini-meta analysis of seven studies, we looked at whether loneliness is related to altered expectations of one’s own and others' emotion transitions.

www.nature.com/articles/s44...
(1/4)

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Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · 21d

I completely understand when someone is busy and has to turn down a review request. But please suggest others if possible. I am now handling a paper with seven review requests declined (so far), and not a single person has left suggestions for alternatives.

Benedek Kurdi @benedek.bsky.social · 21d

@psychillinois.bsky.social Social Cognition Lab, fall 2025

Members of the Social Cognition Lab (L to R): Neranjana Iyer, Vicky Wang, Benedek Kurdi, Joyan Cyrus, Shaoming Wang, and Siyu He

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Monica Ellwood-Lowe @mellwoodlowe.bsky.social · 23d

I’m hiring!! 🎉 Looking for a full-time Lab Manager to help launch the Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab at Stanford. We’ll use all-day language recording, eye tracking, & neuroimaging to study how kids & families navigate unequal structural constraints. Please share:
phxc1b.rfer.us/STANFORDWcqUYo

Research Coordinator, Minds, Experiences, and Language Lab in Graduate School of Education, Stanford, California, United States

The Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE) seeks a full-time Research Coordinator (acting lab manager) to help launch and coordinate the Minds,.....

phxc1b.rfer.us

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

PsyArXivBot @psyarxivbot.bsky.social · 23d

No Evidence of Experimenter Demand Effects in Three Online Psychology Experiments: https://osf.io/g6xhf

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xavier roberts-gaal @xrg.bsky.social · 23d

We often hear from reviewers: "what about demand effects?" So we developed a method to eliminate them. Something weird happened during testing: We couldn’t detect demand effects in the first place! (1/8)

Summary of design and results from our three studies. (A: Design) Each study used a similar experimental design, measuring both positive and negative demand in an online experiment, with three commonly-used task types (dictator game, vignette, intervention). Our experiments had ns ≈ 250 per cell. (B: Results) Observed demand effects were statistically indistinguishable from zero. The plot shows means and 95% confidence intervals for standardized mean differences derived from frequentist analyses of each experiment and an inverse variance-weighted fixed-effect estimator pooling all experiments (solid bars). Prior measurements of experimenter demand from a previous dictator game experiment (de Quidt et al., 2018; standardized mean difference from regression coefficient) and a meta-analysis primarily including small-sample, in-person studies (Coles et al., 2025; Hedge’s g statistic) are also shown for comparison (striped bars). The main text includes Bayesian analyses that quantify our uncertainty.

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Reposted by Benedek Kurdi

Katie Carmichael @drkatcarm.bsky.social · 27d

::slowly stands while clapping::

Image of labubu doll labeled labubu next to image of spiky labubu doll labeled lakiki

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