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Amit Goldenberg

Amit Goldenberg, Lab Director

I am an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, an affiliate with Harvard’s Department of Psychology,  and a member of the Digital Data and Design Institute (D^3). My research focuses on what makes people emotional in social and group contexts, and how such emotions can be changed when they are unhelpful or undesired. I am particularly interested in how technology is used for both emotion detection and regulation. 

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In my work I try to integrate between experimental psychology that examines behavior at the individual level, and research inspired by complex systems, in which I focus on the psychology of collectives.  To integrate these domains, I employ a multi-method approach that combines behavioral experiments, analysis of data from digital media, and computational modeling.

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I received my PhD in psychology from Stanford University. Before that, I worked as a journalist and a writer. In 2016, my first novel  ‘A City Forsaken’ (עיר הנידחת) was published in Israel (Keter Publishing House).

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CV

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Federico Zimmerman, Postdoctoral fellow 

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lab within the Digital, Data, and Design Institute at Harvard Business School.

I am a computational social scientist who is interested in the psychological processes associated with social interactions. During my doctoral studies at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Argentina, I conducted research using a combination of experimental and computational methods to investigate the underlying psychological mechanisms behind affective polarization and political segregation. 

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Ella Givon, Postdoctoral fellow 

I am a clinical psychologist and Postdoctoral Fellow at the lab, affiliated to Harvard's psychology department.


I obtained my BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel. In my research, I employ computational models to gain deeper insights into the conscious subjective emotional experience. During my doctoral studies, I focused on investigating the dissociation between semantic valence and actual experience, as well as empirically testing the concept of emotional errors. I am interested in how people know what they feel and specially in sex differences in emotional experiences.

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Sofie Labat, Postdoctoral fellow

I am a Postdoctoral Fellow. My research lies at the intersection of natural language processing (NLP), computational social science and psychology.

 

During my PhD, I investigated how people express emotions and affect in social interactions, and how machine learning can be used to automatically detect these signals. My broader research interests include topics such as emotion detection and progression in conversations, social biases in data and models, the linguistics expression of coping strategies and emotional support, and the integration of diverse perspectives into datasets and algorithms. I completed my PhD at Ghent University in Belgium, under the supervision of Véronique Hoste and Thomas Demeester. Prior to that, I earned a MA in Linguistics and Literature (English–French) and a MSc in Artificial Intelligence from KU Leuven.

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Greg Depow, Postdoctoral fellow 

I am a postdoctoral fellow working at the Rady School of Management with Dr. Chris Oveis, and at Harvard Business School with Dr. Amit Goldenberg.

 

I research empathy as a multidimensional construct that can be strategically regulated based on the demands on the situation. In particular, how empathy can be regulated wisely to improve the well-being of empathizers and targets alike in different contexts--from leaders helping followers, to medical practitioners delivering care, to social media users engaging with the content on their feed.

I earned a B.A. from the University of the Fraser Valley and a Master’s degree and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Toronto.

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Matthew Nemesure, Lead Data Scientist at D^3

I am currently a lead data, focused on scaling research data science efforts across the D^3 institute.

 

Prior to joining D^3, I received my PhD from Dartmouth College where my research primarily focused on applied machine learning and digital mental health. 

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Yuning Liu, PHD Student 

I am a PhD student in Population Health Science at Harvard University. I received a M.B.B.S in Medicine from Peking University and M.S. in Global Public Health from Harvard University. I study how to promote user well-being on digital platforms such as social media. My research examines the roles of user intentions, platform design, and creator-driven communication in shaping positive online experiences.

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Daan Vandermeule, PHD Student 

I am a Ph.D. student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Prof. Eran Halperin.

 

I received a B.S. and M.S. in Psychology at the University of Leuven. My main research interests focus on the mechanisms driving emotional similarity amongst members of a group and the implications of emotional similarity for individual and group outcomes.

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Yajun Cao, PHD Student 

I am a Ph.D. student in Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School.

 

I received a B.S. in Psychology and B.B.A. from Peking University. My research interests revolve around emotions and social cognition. I am especially interested in how emotions and perceptions shape interpersonal interactions and their management applications.

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    Yaoxi Shi, Visiting PHD Student 

    I am a PhD student in Organizational Behavior at Imperial College London and a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

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    My research focused on how people navigate social interactions and conversations. Using a combination of computational and experimental methods, I study how people decide who to talk to, what to say, and how what we say shapes how others perceive us, in both personal and workplace settings. I'm also deeply interested in how emerging technologies and emotions shape the way we interact with each other. I received an MA in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago and a BS in Psychology from Zhejiang University.

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    Matan Eshed, Research Assistant

    I am a licensed clinical psychologist and research assistant in Amit's lab, currently preparing to apply to PhD programs. I also volunteer as a research assistant in Dr. Richard McNally’s lab in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

     

    My research takes an interdisciplinary approach, integrating clinical psychology with philosophy, computer science, and technology. I am particularly interested in the intersection of psychotherapy and technology, with a current focus on factors influencing psychological flexibility, explored through the use of social robots, computational tasks, and AI. I’m also intrigued by questions surrounding our ability to reconstruct fundamental psychological assumptions—such as those related to the mind-body connection, our sense of reality, and the degree of freedom we perceive.

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    I hold a BA in Psychology and Philosophy from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MA in Clinical Psychology from Ruppin Academic Center. 

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    Affiliates

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    Jonas Paul Schöne

    I am a doctoral student in Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford supervised by Prof. Brian Parkinson and Prof. Amit Goldenberg.

     

    In my research I investigate the spread of emotions in groups, specifically the reason why negative emotions tend to spread faster, and the factors and consequences of this spread. To answer these questions I use mixed methods, combining traditional psychological research techniques with modern computational social science approaches. Prior to my doctoral studies I obtained a B.Sc. in Business Psychology and researched emotions at the Stanford University, Norwegian Cyber Defense Force, and the Leicester City Football Academy. 

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    Lucia Freira

    I am an Economist, a United Nations Behavioural Science former Fellow, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Neuroscience Lab at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires.

     

    I am currently working with Amit Goldenberg and Joaquín Navajas, studying how people collectively use emotional regulation techniques, such as reappraisal. I am also interested in issues related to polarization, crime, and family violence, with a focus on its consequences for child development.  

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    Alumni

    David Bailey - Honglin Bao - Ari Dyckovsky - Alina Herderich - Zi Huang - Yael Millgram - Michael Pinus - Eric Shuman - Ke Wang ​

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