Morteza Dehghani

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About

Morteza Dehghani is a leading researcher at the intersection of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and social psychology, with a focus on understanding and modeling human moral reasoning, cultural cognition, and decision-making. He is best known for pioneering the use of virtual human platforms as experimental tools in cognitive science, most notably through his influential 2013 paper "Virtual Humans: A New Toolkit for Cognitive Science Research" (21 citations), co-authored with colleagues at USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies. This work demonstrated how embodied conversational agents can simulate complex social interactions, enabling controlled studies of moral dilemmas, bias, and cultural conflict. Dehghani’s broader contributions include developing computational models that integrate natural language processing and machine learning to analyze large-scale textual data, revealing how moral values shape political discourse and ideological polarization. His research has been widely cited across disciplines, with over 4,000 total citations, and he has received multiple awards, including an NSF CAREER grant. By bridging AI and behavioral science, Dehghani’s work offers powerful new methods for exploring the cognitive foundations of human morality and social behavior.