University of Illinois

Benedek Kurdi

Department of Psychology

As an experimental psychologist, my research seeks to understand the immense power and the surprising limitations of our minds in adaptively responding to new information given a lifetime of learning. I examine learning in the context of basic social processes. Specifically, I study the ordinary decisions we make every day that are critical to our well-being and even survival: our evaluations of and beliefs about other people. In doing so, I rely on a combination of traditional online and laboratory experiments as well as computational approaches, while drawing on a variety of learning paradigms, including reinforcement learning, evaluative conditioning, propositional learning, and causal learning. These methods help me uncover the basic mechanisms involved in how we acquire and update our impressions of individuals, especially against the backdrop of information about their social group memberships, such as gender, sexual orientation, age, race, and ethnicity.

I am a Lincoln Excellence Assistant Professor of Psychology and a Beckman Fellow in the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. I hold additional affiliations at the Social & Behavioral Science Institute, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, and the Siebel Center for Design. I obtained my PhD in 2019 at Harvard University under the mentorship of Mahzarin Banaji and completed my postdoctoral training at Yale University with Melissa Ferguson. My research has been funded by the Dean's Competitive Fund for Promising Scholarship, the Harvard Graduate School Fund, the Harvard Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative, the Stimson, Restricted, and Knox Funds at the Harvard Psychology Department, and the Cornell Center for Social Sciences. My work has been published in American Psychologist, Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nature Reviews Psychology, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, and numerous other outlets.

I am the chair of Project Implicit’s Scientific Advisory Board and a member of the editorial boards of Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Social Cognition, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. I am also serving as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General and at Open Mind. I was named a Rising Star by the Association for Psychological Science, received the SAGE Early-Career Trajectory Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the International Social Cognition Network’s Early Career Award, and I am a fellow of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. I have extensive teaching experience in social cognition, social psychology, and statistics at the undergraduate and graduate levels. For my statistics teaching, I received the Derek Bok Center’s Harvard Distinction in Teaching Award three times and, for my graduate-level social cognition teaching, I was included on the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent By Their Students at the University of Illinois two times.

Benedek Kurdi

Assistant Professor
Department of Psychology
University of Illinois

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What do I do?

research

Taking a multi-tier approach to implicit cognition

Implicit attitude change I use the experimental method to understand how implicit evaluations change. What are the inputs that they reflect? What type(s) of process are most effective in shifting them? Can short-term malleability translate into long-term change, and if so under what conditions?

Attitudes in the wild I use methods (word embeddings, large archival datasets, meta-analyses) to understand how implicit evaluations operate in the world. Such information on variability and change complements experimental studies in theory building and has direct implications for inequality.

Computational approaches I rely on computational methods — specifically, different reinforcement learning algorithms — to try to formalize the representational underpinnings of implicit evaluation. This approach, unlike most verbal theories, can generate quantitative and easy-to-falsify hypotheses.

Open science and resources All my projects have open data and materials. I have created multiple open-access resources for the community, including the OASIS stimulus set, as well as tools to calculate the reliability of indirect measures and estimate power for studies on the attitude–behavior relationship.

Publications

The articles are provided to ensure the timely dissemination of scientific information.
In order to download an article, click the PDF button, and in order to obtain raw data files and analysis scripts, click the OSF button.

Aust, F., Heycke, T., Kurdi, B., Van Dessel, P., Cone, J., …, & De Houwer, J. (in press). Of two minds: A registered replication. Psychological Science. PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Melnikoff, D. E., & Morris, A. (2026). Unconscious mental content in implicit evaluation: Evidence from misprediction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000491 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B. (2026). Reorienting implicit bias education in organizations: The MAIBE checklist. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 13(1), 204–211. https://doi.org/10.1177/23727322251386798 PDF
Kurdi, B., Weinreich, Z., Dunham, Y., & Mandelbaum, E. (2025). Logical operations shape the formation of implicit attitudes: Evidence from the negation of bipolar and unipolar adjectives. Open Mind, 9, 1277–1307. https://doi.org/10.1162/opmi.a.25 PDF OSF
Melnikoff, D. E.*, & Kurdi, B.* (2025). Model-based algorithms shape automatic evaluative processing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(25), e2417068122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2417068122 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Okura, K., Hehman, E., & Ferguson, M. J. (2025). Cognitive underpinnings and ecological correlates of implicit bias against non-Americans in the United States. Scientific Reports, 15, 15191. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-98384-3 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B.*, Charlesworth, T. E. S.*, & Mair, P. (2025). International stability and change in explicit and implicit attitudes: An investigation spanning 33 countries, five social groups, and 11 years (2009–2019). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 154(6), 1643–1666. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001746 PDF OSF
Morehouse, K. N., Kurdi, B., & Nosek, B. A. (2025). Responsible data sharing: Identifying and remedying possible re-identification of human participants. American Psychologist, 80(6), 928–941. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001346 PDF OSF
Hudson, S. T. J.*, Kurdi, B.*, Lai, C. K., Johnson, J., & Banaji, M. R. (2024). Implicit attitudes evoked by a singular American slur: Five experiments on n***r and n***a in samples of Black and White Americans. Social Cognition, 42(3), 161–197. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2024.42.3.161 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Melnikoff, D. E., Hannay, J. W., Korkmaz, A., Lee, K. M., Ritchie, E., Surdel, N., Vuletich, H. A., Yang, X., Payne, B. K., & Ferguson, M. J. (2024). Testing the automaticity features of the Affect Misattribution Procedure: The roles of awareness and intentionality. Behavior Research Methods, 56(4), 3161–3194. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02291-2 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., & Mandelbaum, E. (2023). The case against implicit bias fatalism. Nature Reviews Psychology, 2(11), 656–657. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00248-y PDF
Kurdi, B., Sanchez, A., Dasgupta, N., & Banaji, M. R. (2023). (When) do counterattitudinal exemplars shift implicit racial evaluations? Replications and extensions of Dasgupta and Greenwald (2001). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 126(4), 543–565. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000370 PDF OSF
Morris, A.*, & Kurdi, B.* (2023). Awareness of implicit attitudes: Large-scale investigations of mechanism and scope. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(12), 3311–3343. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001464 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Krosch, A. R., & Ferguson, M. J. (2023). Oppressed groups engender implicit positivity: Seven demonstrations using novel and familiar targets. Psychological Science, 34(10), 1069–1086. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976231194588 PDF OSF
Simonovits, B., Kurdi, B., & Simonovits, G. (2023). Disabled and Romani passengers face similar levels of discrimination but different levels of open hostility in the sharing economy. Scientific Reports, 13, 10605. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-37263-1 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., & Charlesworth, T. E. S. (2023). A 3D framework of implicit attitude change. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(8), 745–758. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.05.009 PDF
Kurdi, B., Morehouse, K. N., & Dunham, Y. (2023). How do explicit and implicit evaluations shift? A preregistered meta-analysis of the effects of co-occurrence and relational information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 124(6), 1174–1202. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000329 PDF OSF
Charlesworth, T. E. S.*, Navon, M.*, Rabinovich, Y., Lofaro, N., & Kurdi, B. (2023). The Project Implicit International Dataset: Measuring implicit and explicit social group attitudes and stereotypes across 34 countries (2009–2019). Behavior Research Methods, 55(3), 1413–1440. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-022-01851-2 PDF OSF
Mandelbaum, E., Dunham, Y., Feiman, R., Firestone, C., Green, E. J., Harris, D., Kibbe, M. M., Kurdi, B., Mylopoulos, M., Shepherd, J., Wellwood, A., Porot, N., & Quilty‐Dunn, J. (2022). Problems and mysteries of the many languages of thought. Cognitive Science, 46(12). https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13225 PDF
Melnikoff, D. E., & Kurdi, B. (2022). What implicit measures of bias can do. Psychological Inquiry, 33(3), 185–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2022.2106759 PDF
Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2022). Implicit person memory: Domain-general and domain-specific processes of learning and change. In E. Balcetis & G. B. Moskowitz (Eds.), The handbook of impression formation: A social psychological approach (pp. 459–488). New York, NY: Routledge. PDF
Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2022). Implicit social cognition: A brief (and gentle) introduction. In A. S. Reber & R. Allen (Eds.), The cognitive unconscious: The first half-century (pp. 323–346). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. PDF
Kurdi, B., & Dunham, Y. (2022). What can the implicit social cognition literature teach us about implicit social cognition? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 45, e80. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X21000595 PDF
Kurdi, B.*, Hussey, I.*, Stahl, C.*, Hughes, S., Unkelbach, C., Ferguson, M. J., & Corneille, O. (2022). Unaware attitude formation in the surveillance task? Revisiting the findings of Moran et al. (2021). International Review of Social Psychology, 35(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.546 PDF OSF
Morehouse, K. N., Kurdi, B., Hakim, E., & Banaji, M. R. (2022). When a stereotype dumbfounds: Probing the nature of the surgeon = male belief. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 3, 100044. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cresp.2022.100044 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Morris, A., & Cushman, F. A. (2022). The role of causal structure in implicit evaluation. Cognition, 225, 105116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2022.105116 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Mann, T. C., & Ferguson, M. J. (2022). Persuading the implicit mind: Changing negative implicit evaluations with an 8-minute podcast. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 13(3), 688–697. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506211037140 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Carroll, T. J., & Banaji, M. R. (2021). Specificity and incremental predictive validity of implicit attitudes: Studies of a race-based phenotype. Cognitive Research: Principles and Implications, 6, 61. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41235-021-00324-y PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., & Dunham, Y. (2021). Sensitivity of implicit evaluations to accurate and erroneous propositional inferences. Cognition, 214, 104792. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104792 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Ratliff, K. A., & Cunningham, W. A. (2021). Can the Implicit Association Test serve as a valid measure of automatic cognition? A response to Schimmack (2021). Perspectives on Psychological Science, 16(2), 422–434. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620904080 PDF
Charlesworth, T. E. S., Yang, V., Mann, T. C., Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2021). Gender stereotypes in natural language: Word embeddings show robust consistency across child and adult language corpora of more than 65 million words. Psychological Science, 32(2), 218–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620963619 PDF OSF
Moran, T., Hughes, S., Hussey, I., Vadillo, M. A., Olson, M. A., ..., Kurdi, B., ..., & De Houwer, J. (2021). Incidental attitude formation via the surveillance task: A preregistered replication of the Olson and Fazio (2001) study. Psychological Science, 32(1), 120–131. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620968526 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., & Dunham, Y. (2020). Propositional accounts of implicit evaluation: Taking stock and looking ahead. Social Cognition, 38(Supplement), s42–s67. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2020.38.supp.s42 PDF
Kurdi, B., Krosch, A. R., & Ferguson, M. J. (2020). Implicit evaluations of moral agents reflect intent and outcome. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 90, 103990. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103990 PDF OSF
Charlesworth, T. E. S., Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2020). Children’s implicit attitude acquisition: Evaluative statements succeed, repeated pairings fail. Developmental Science, 23(3), e12911. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12911 PDF OSF
Mann, T. C., Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2020). How effectively can implicit evaluations be updated? Using evaluative statements after aversive repeated evaluative pairings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 149(6), 1169–1192. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000701 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Gershman, S. J., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). Model-free and model-based learning processes in the updating of explicit and implicit evaluations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(13), 6035–6044. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820238116 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Mann, T. C., Charlesworth, T. E. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). The relationship between implicit intergroup attitudes and beliefs. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(13), 5862–5871. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820240116 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). Attitude change via repeated evaluative pairings versus evaluative statements: Shared and unique features. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(5), 681–703. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000151 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B.*, Seitchik, A. E.*, Axt, J. R., Carroll, T. J., Karapetyan, A., Kaushik, N., Tomezsko, D., Greenwald, A. G., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). Relationship between the Implicit Association Test and intergroup behavior: A meta-analysis. American Psychologist, 74(5), 569–586. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000364 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Diaz, A. J., Wilmuth, C. A., Friedman, M. C., & Banaji, M. R. (2018). Variations in the relationship between memory confidence and memory accuracy: The effects of spontaneous accessibility, list length, modality, and complexity. Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, 5(1), 3–28. https://doi.org/10.1037/cns0000117 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2017). Reports of the death of the individual difference approach to implicit social cognition may be greatly exaggerated: A commentary on Payne, Vuletich, and Lundberg. Psychological Inquiry, 28(4), 281–287. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2017.1373555 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2017). Repeated evaluative pairings and evaluative statements: How effectively do they shift implicit attitudes? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(2), 194–213. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000239 PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Lozano, S., & Banaji, M. R. (2017). Introducing the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS). Behavior Research Methods, 49(2), 457–470. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-016-0715-3 PDF OSF

Working Papers

Kurdi, B., Ma, M., Surdel, N., Ferguson, M. J., & Cone, J. (under review). The effects of increasing amounts of counterattitudinal information on implicit and explicit evaluations: A replication and extension of Rydell et al. (2007). PDF OSF
Nudler, Y., Morris, A., & Kurdi, B. (under review). The explicit anchor: How inferential reasoning mimics introspective access in implicit evaluation prediction. PDF OSF
Vargas Salfate, S., Stern, C., & Kurdi, B. (under review). Stereotypes of social class and race in the United States: A social sampling account. PDF OSF
Kurdi, B., Mann, T. C., Axt, J. R., & Ferguson, M. J. (under review). The robustness of implicit evaluation updating: Tests of time course and resistance to the return of negativity. PDF OSF

THOSE WHO DO (MUCH OF) THE WORK

LAB MEMBERS

Past and present

The Social Cognition Lab in September 2025
(L to R) Neranjana Iyer, Vicky Wang, Benedek Kurdi, Joyan Cyrus, Shaoming Wang, and Siyu He

Information for prospective graduate students is available here

Joyan Cyrus

Ph.D. Student

Joyan received his B.A.s in Psychology and Sociology from UC Davis. Broadly, he is interested in studying cognitive processes in local contexts, like their impacts on social judgments and decision-making, and examining how basic social processes influence learning and behavior to enhance overall understanding. In his free time, Joyan enjoys Golden Age Hollywood and Krzysztof Kieslowski films, as well as playing tennis, biking, hiking, exploring different herbal teas, and engaging in meaningful conversations.

Sunera Liyanage

Ph.D. Student

Sunera received his A.B. in Psychology and Physics from Harvard College. He studies the socio-cognitive mechanisms that shape attitudes and beliefs about social groups and how they, in turn, foster tolerance and intolerance. He is particularly interested in how group attitudes shift over time, including the mechanisms around sudden, large-scale shifts. Outside the lab, Sunera enjoys reading or watching the latest murder mysteries, acting on stage (the non-musical kind), running, and hiking.

Siyu He

MSPS Student

Siyu received his B.A. in Psychology from Bates College. Broadly, he is interested in how our expectations are shaped or changed by factors such as goal setting, psychological distance, and social group perceptions, and how these expectations influence behaviors, emotions, and perceptions of ourselves and others in social contexts. In his free time, Siyu enjoys playing guitar, producing music, and dancing.

Neranjana Iyer

MSPS Student

Neranjana received her B.S. in Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience from UC San Diego. Broadly, she is interested in pedagogy and the processes of learning and memory. More specifically, she is interested in how implicit attitudes are formed, reinforced, and modified within K-12 and higher education systems. Outside the lab, she is a longtime vocalist and classical dancer, and enjoys crocheting, yoga, and reading historical fiction in her free time.

Sarah Hadjarab

Research Associate

Sarah received her B.S from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and is now pursuing a Master’s degree at The University of Chicago. She is interested in using computational social science as a tool for informing evidence-based policy and intervention. In the lab, she works on projects involving natural language processing, generative AI, and large-scale data analysis to study a range of social topics. Outside the lab, she enjoys cabin getaways with plenty of fishing, escape rooms, and playing Nintendo Switch games with her sisters.

Jana (Yueer) Ji

Research Associate

Jana received her B.S. in Psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign in spring 2025. Her research interests center on the cognitive mechanisms underlying shifts in social attitudes. She is also interested in advancing research reproducibility and reducing research bias through rigorous experimental designs. In her free time, she enjoys exercising, practicing calligraphy, traveling, and watching musicals.

Vicky (Jueying) Wang

Research Assistant

Jueying is a junior undergraduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, majoring in Psychology and Statistics. Broadly, she is interested in understanding the patterns behind higher-order cognitive processes in social contexts, such as attitudes and decision-making. She is also fascinated by how large-scale societal changes shape individual psychology over time. In her free time, Jueying enjoys watching Japanese anime, listening to rock music, playing musical instruments, cosplaying, and spending time with her adorable Maine Coon cat.

LAB ALUMNI

Babak Hemmatian

Research Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Former Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow

Babak Hemmatian received a degree in clinical psychology from the University of Tehran before attending Brown University for a master's in computer science and a doctorate in cognitive science, the latter advised by Steven Sloman. He is currently a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He is interested in how people incorporate information from their communities into their thinking about complex and ambiguous issues, and how they negotiate the contents of the collective knowledge base with fellow humans. To this end, he uses natural language processing algorithms, behavioral experiments, and neuroimaging studies. Outside academia, he enjoys producing English translations of classic Persian poems and reading/writing about history.

Arlyssia Kelly

Ph.D. Student, University of California, Riverside

Former Thesis Student

Arlyssia graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and is currently an incoming Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside. Broadly, she is interested in social cognition, specifically how and why people are the way they are and what cognitive processes are involved in the decisions we make in social situations. Outside of school Arlyssia loves to sing, dance, and try new things, especially travel and sightseeing.

Shaoming Wang

Lab Manager & Programmer

Shaoming received his B.S. in psychology from Fudan University and his M.A. in experimental psychology from New York University. Broadly, he is interested in understanding the computational basis of higher-order cognitive processes, such as induction, causal reasoning, and creativity, and how these processes individually and jointly contribute to the social mind. Outside of the lab, Shaoming enjoys playing tennis, trying various cuisines and creating art pieces.

Benedek Kurdi

Benedek Kurdi

Benedek Kurdi

CV for download

Bluesky

What do I do?

Publications

Working Papers

LAB MEMBERS

Joyan Cyrus

Sunera Liyanage

Siyu He

Neranjana Iyer

Sarah Hadjarab

Jana (Yueer) Ji

Vicky (Jueying) Wang

LAB ALUMNI

Babak Hemmatian

Arlyssia Kelly

Shaoming Wang

Media

OPEN AFFECTIVE STANDARDIZED IMAGE SET

IMPLICIT ASSOCIATION TEST

news

Contact Me