Directory

Benedek Kurdi's directory photo.

Benedek Kurdi

(he/him/his)

Assistant Professor

Primary Affiliation

Intelligence, Learning, and Plasticity

Affiliations

Status Affiliate Faculty

Home Department of Psychology

Phone

Email kurdi@illinois.edu

Address

  • Biography

    Benedek Kurdi is currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. His 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. His 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. He is a member of Project Implicit’s Scientific Advisory Board and the editorial boards of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Review, Social Cognition, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. Professor Kurdi is also currently serving as an Editorial Fellow at the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. He has extensive teaching experience in social cognition, statistics, and social psychology at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

    Education

    • B.A., Eotvos Lorand University, 2011

    • M.A., political science, Central European University, 2013

    • M.A., psychology, Harvard University, 2019

    • Ph.D., psychology, Harvard University, 2019

  • Honors

    • 2023: List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students, University of Illinois

    • 2023: Early Career Award, International Social Cognition Network

    • 2023: SAGE Early-Career Trajectory Award, Society for Personality and Social Psychology

    • 2023: Rising Star, Association for Psychological Science 

    • 2019: Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

    • 2017: Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning

    • 2016: Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning 

    • 2016: Runner-up, Society for Personality and Social Psychology Student Poster Ward

    • 2013: Outstanding Academic Achievement Award, Central European University

    • 2013: Best M.A. Thesis Award, Department of Political Science, Central European University 

    • 2013: Certificate in Political Research Methodology and Social Analysis, Central European University

  • Research

    Research Areas:

    • Social Personality

    Research Interests:

    • Implicit Attitude Change

    • Attitudes in the Wild

    • Computational Approaches

    • Open Science and Resources

    As an experimental psychologist, Professor Kurdi’s 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. He examines learning in the context of basic social processes. Specifically, he studies 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, he relies 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 him 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.

  • 2024

    • Morehouse, K. N., Kurdi, B., & Nosek, B. A. (2024). Responsible data sharing: Identifying and remedying possible re-identification of human participants. American Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0001346

    2023

    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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. (2023). Testing the automaticity features of the Affect Misattribution Procedure: The roles of awareness and intentionality. Behavior Research Methods. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02291-2
    • 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
    • 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. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000370
    • 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
    • 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

    2022

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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

    2021

    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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

    2020

    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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

    2019

    • 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
    • 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
    • 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
    • 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

    2018

    • 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

    2017

    • 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
    • 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
    • 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