Morteza Dehghani

Morteza Dehghani
Alma materUniversity of California, Los Angeles (B.S., M.S.)
Northwestern University (M.S., Ph.D.)
Known forResearch on morality, language, artificial intelligence, and computational social science
Scientific career
FieldsPsychology, Computer science
InstitutionsUniversity of Southern California
Doctoral advisorKen 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.

Education

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]

Honors

Selected publications

  • Kennedy, Brendan; Atari, Mohammad; Mostafazadeh Davani, Aida; Hoover, Joe; Omrani, Ali; Graham, Jesse; Dehghani, Morteza (1 July 2021). "Moral concerns are differentially observable in language". Cognition. 212 104696. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104696. ISSN 0010-0277.
  • Hoover, Joe; Atari, Mohammad; Mostafazadeh Davani, Aida; Kennedy, Brendan; Portillo-Wightman, Gwenyth; Yeh, Leigh; Dehghani, Morteza (28 July 2021). "Investigating the role of group-based morality in extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 4585. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-24786-2. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 8319297.
  • Reimer, Nils Karl; Atari, Mohammad; Karimi-Malekabadi, Farzan; Trager, Jackson; Kennedy, Brendan; Graham, Jesse; Dehghani, Morteza (September 2022). "Moral values predict county-level COVID-19 vaccination rates in the United States". American Psychologist. 77 (6): 743–759. doi:10.1037/amp0001020. ISSN 1935-990X.

References

  1. ^ "Faculty - Center for Computational Language Sciences". USC.edu.
  2. ^ "People - Morality and Language Lab". Morality and Language Lab.
  3. ^ "Recent alumni". Northwestern University.
  4. ^ "Former Postdoctoral Fellows". Northwestern University.
  5. ^ "People". Brain and Creativity Institute.
  6. ^ "Introducing Professor Morteza Dehghani" (PDF). USC.
  7. ^ "Morteza Dehghani". USC Dornsife.
  8. ^ Dehghani, Morteza; Johnson, Kate; Hoover, Joe; Sagi, Eyal; Garten, Justin; Parmar, Niki Jitendra; Vaisey, Stephen; Iliev, Rumen; Graham, Jesse (March 2016). "Purity homophily in social networks". Journal of Experimental Psychology. General. 145 (3): 366–375. doi:10.1037/xge0000139. ISSN 1939-2222.
  9. ^ Medzerian, David (16 December 2021). "Hate speech and online extremism focus of USC study — USC News". USC Today.
  10. ^ Ramalho, Tiago (28 August 2023). ""Nós contra eles": a pureza e a lealdade são o reduto do discurso de ódio". PÚBLICO (in Portuguese).
  11. ^ "Where Does All That Hate We Feel Come From?". The New York Times. 27 April 2022.
  12. ^ Hoover, Joe; Atari, Mohammad; Mostafazadeh Davani, Aida; Kennedy, Brendan; Portillo-Wightman, Gwenyth; Yeh, Leigh; Dehghani, Morteza (28 July 2021). "Investigating the role of group-based morality in extreme behavioral expressions of prejudice". Nature Communications. 12 (1): 4585. doi:10.1038/s41467-021-24786-2. ISSN 2041-1723. PMC 8319297.
  13. ^ Mooijman, Marlon; Hoover, Joe; Lin, Ying; Ji, Heng; Dehghani, Morteza (June 2018). "Moralization in social networks and the emergence of violence during protests". Nature Human Behaviour. 2 (6): 389–396. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0353-0. ISSN 2397-3374.
  14. ^ Atari, Mohammad; Davani, Aida Mostafazadeh; Kogon, Drew; Kennedy, Brendan; Saxena, Nripsuta Ani; Anderson, Ian; Dehghani, Morteza (August 2022). "Morally homogeneous networks and radicalism". Social Psychological and Personality Science. 13 (6): 999–1009. doi:10.1177/19485506211059329.
  15. ^ "Chatbots learned to write from us. Can AI now change the way we think?". Radio-Canada.ca (in Canadian French). 13 August 2025.
  16. ^ https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10531652
  17. ^ Reyes, Melissa (5 May 2024). "White House Presentation". Department of Psychology.
  18. ^ Amir, Dorsa; Hemmatian, Babak; Kasirzadeh, Atoosa; Jasbi, Masoud; Yazdiha, Hajar; Dehghani, Morteza (1 November 2022). "Iran: amplify voices of persecuted academics". Nature. 611 (7934): 33–33. doi:10.1038/d41586-022-03515-9.
  19. ^ "The Moral Paralysis Facing Iranians Right Now". New York Times. 28 June 2025.
  20. ^ "AFOSR Awards Grants to 48 Scientists and Engineers through its Young Investigator Research". Wright-Patterson AFB.
  21. ^ "Psychological Scientists Recognized with NSF Early-Career Awards". Association for Psychological Science - APS.
  22. ^ "Award for Inclusion Research recipients". Google Research.
  23. ^ "Celebrating 2024 SPSP Fellows". SPSP.
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