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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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I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

8 August, 2021
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For

Searching for something, whether it is your keys or a familiar face, is a frequent everyday activity. Under some circumstances, such as in security settings, it even carries life-saving implications. Until now, it was widely believed that in order to find what they are looking for, people need to know at least some aspects of what they are trying to find. However, this assumption is inconsistent with common human experiences, such as suddenly finding a friend in a crowd although there was no prior expectation of seeing them.

PhD candidate Oryah Lancry-Dayan and Prof. Yoni Pertzov (in collaboration with Prof. Matthias Gamer of University of Würzburg), demonstrate that despite the many people that each person knows, we can all find a familiar face embedded in unfamiliar ones, even without knowing the identity of that face in advance. This calls for a modification of current theories and makes clear that the cognitive system can utilize information from a large area of the visual environment to guide search, even if it is unclear what the search target looks like.

See full Article here