Morteza Dehghani
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Northwestern University (M.S., Ph.D.)
Morteza Dehghani | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | University of California, Los Angeles (B.S., M.S.) Northwestern University (M.S., Ph.D.) |
| Known for | Research on morality, language, artificial intelligence, and computational social science |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychology, Computer science |
| Institutions | University of Southern California |
| Doctoral advisor | Ken Forbus, Douglas Medin |
Morteza Dehghani is an Iranian-American psychologist and computer scientist who is a professor of Psychology and Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC). He is the Director of the Center for Computational Language Sciences,[1] Director of the Morality and Language Lab,[2] and a member of USC's Brain and Creativity Institute.
Dehghani earned a B.S. in 2003 and an M.S. in 2005 in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He later received an M.S. in 2007 and a Ph.D. in 2009 in computer science with a focus on cognitive science from Northwestern University,[3] where he also completed postdoctoral research in psychology.[4]
Career
Dehghani joined the University of Southern California in 2011 as a research scientist at the Institute for Creative Technologies, before holding faculty positions in computer science, psychology, and the Brain and Creativity Institute.[5] He served as an assistant professor from 2014[6] to 2020, associate professor from 2020 to 2023, and was promoted to full professor of psychology and computer science in 2023.[7]
Research
Dehghani's research lies at the intersection of artificial intelligence and psychology. His early work applied computational models and natural language processing to study morality,[8] decision-making, and cultural cognition. Beginning around 2012, his work examined what he terms the "dark side" of morality,[9][10][11] focusing on moral ecosystems,[12] moral homogenization,[13][14] prejudice, and hate. More recently, he has integrated psychological theories into artificial intelligence systems to improve robustness and human-like behavior.[15][16]
His work has been cited in policy discussions and presented at venues including the White House[17] and the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services. Dehghani has also engaged in activism supporting persecuted Iranian academics and has published opinion essays analyzing Iranian political crises through a moral psychological framework.[18][19]
