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matan rubin

Comparing the value of perceived humanversus AI-generated empathy

16 July, 2025

new paper published in Nature Human Behaviour by Matan Rubin, Prof. Anat Perry, and colleagues, explores whether empathic responses are perceived differently when attributed to a human versus artificial intelligence.

Across nine studies with over 6,000 participants, the researchers found that identically generated empathic messages were rated as more empathic, supportive, and authentic when thought to come from a human.

oded leshem

Congratulation to Dr. Oded Adomi Leshem

2 July, 2025

Who won ISPP’s 2025 David O. Sears Best Book Award for his book "Hope Amidst Conflict: Philosophical and Psychological Explorations," Published by Oxford University Press.

Leshem is a senior researcher at the PICR lab and the founder of the new International Hub for Hope Research.

David O. Sears Best Book on Mass Politics Award

Amir Tal

Welcome Dr. Amir Tal

24 June, 2025

The Department of Psychology is excited to welcome Dr. Amir Tal, a new faculty member joining the department in collaboration with the Department of Cognitive Science and the Brain. Amir will join us in the upcoming academic year (2025–2026) and will lead the Computational Psychology cluster.

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Humans perseverate on punishment avoidance goals in multigoal reinforcement learning

17 March, 2022
PAUL SHARP

Although it is known that planning for even a single goal can be difficult for humans to do perfectly, humans successfully manage to plan for many goals in spite of their cognitive limitations. Paul Sharp, from Dr. Eran Eldar’s lab, discovered that humans solve this problem in part by using an efficient strategy where they persist in pursuing goals even when they are irrelevant, saving a major cost of switching between planning for different types of goal. Moreover, Paul found that humans use this strategy more so when the the goal is to avoid punishment, which aligns with work showing that humans prioritize punishment avoidance given the evolutionary costs of failing to handle threats appropriately. Paul demonstrated these findings in a large-scale online experiment in collaboration with researchers from University College London.

See the full article here