Thesis research
Students in the Psychological Data Science track will perform research examining fundamental questions in psychological science, using advanced data science methods.
The students are encouraged to perform this research under the joint supervision of experts in psychology (a faculty member from the Psychology Department) and experts in data science (e.g., a faculty member from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management).
Relevant primary advisers from the Psychology Department:
Dr. Naama Atzaba-Poria, Dr. Tal Eyal, Dr. Eran Bar-Kalifa, Prof. Yoella Bereby-Meyer, Prof. Andrea Berger, Prof. Ilan Dinstein, Dr. Michael Gilead, Dr. Yoav Kessler, Prof. Nachshon Meiran, Dr. Talya Sadeh, Dr. Nirit Soffer-Dudek, Dr. Liat Tikotzky, Dr. Florina Uzefovsky.
Relevant secondary advisers from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management:
Prof. Tal Oron, Dr. Aharon Bar Hillel, Prof. Sigal Berman, Prof. Hillel Bar Gera, Dr. Yuval Bitan, Dr. Jonathan Rosenblatt, Prof. Israel Parment, Dr. Avinoam Borovsky, Prof. Lior Fink, Dr. Yair Brechenko, Prof. Boaz Lerner.
research topics
Naama Atzaba-Poria
I am a developmental psychologist, interested in studying parent-child relationship and child development through longitudinal studies. In my studies I use multi-informant and multi-method approach for data collections, including observations (parent-child videotaped interactions), assessments, interviews and self-reports measures. |
Tal Eyal
I am a social psychologist and my research centers around two main topics. One is exploring the functions of emotions in self-regulation and social cognition. A second research topic concerns processes involved in enabling versus impeding mind reading accuracy (i.e., people’s ability to accurately identify other people’s emotions, preferences, and self-perception). Examples for questions we study in the lab: Which emotion regulation strategies are effective in down-regulating anger vs. guilt, or core disgust vs. moral disgust? Does deliberately taking the perspective of other people enable accurate mind reading? |
Eran Bar-Kalifa
In my research, I examine the various manners in which interpersonal dynamics that occur within the context of intimate relationships shape and influence partners' immediate emotional experience and behaviors, and potentially change their long-term personal and relational well-being. We examine the interdependence of partners’ emotions, behaviors, voice, movement, and autonomic responses (e.g., HR, EDA), while interacting with each other. We use experiencing sampling methods for collecting various types of intensive data (e.g., self-reports, voice, location) from couples’ daily lives. |
Yoella Bereby-Meyer
I study decision making in social and individual contexts. My research applies an integrative perspective, combining psychology and economics. I focus on prosocial behavior including cooperation, reciprocity, fairness, and honesty. I examine the effect of the interplay between the intuitive emotional system (System 1) and the deliberative rational system (System 2) on social preferences such as fairness and honesty. I am also interested in risk perception and specifically "Passive Risk"- risk brought on by inaction, rather than by action, for example, not getting vaccinated, not exercising routinely, not saving for retirement. |
Andrea Berger
My lab focuses on the development of self-regulation, i.e., the executive aspects of attention and control, inhibitory control, monitoring and error-detection; and the early bases of numerical cognition. We utilize Machine learning algorithms discriminating normative from abnormal development, i.e., ADHD, FAS, mental dissability. |
Ilan Dinstein
Identifying specific sub-types of autism based on biological and behavioral measures from hundreds of children diagnosed in Soroka Medical Center. All research is based on the the regional autism database that has been collected at the Negev Autism Center - www.negevautism.org |
Michael Gilead
My field of research is social-cognitive neuroscience. This means that: I am mostly interested in phenomena that seem to be the result of the social-cultural capacities of humans (for example, the ability to regulate one's emotions, political conflict). In thinking of these phenomena, I focus on individual-level mental events that subserve them, (e.g., perspective-taking processes, the workings of affective-motivational systems), often applying a biological perspective (i.e., thinking in terms of evolutionary functions, using neuroimaging methods). We acquire and analyze behavioral and fMRI data, as well as conduct automated content analyses of "big-data" from social networks (e.g., facebook, Twitter). |
Yoav Kessler
I am a cognitive psychologist, interested in cognitive control and working memory (aka short-term memory). Research in my lab examines how we control the flow of information from the environment to our working memory, and how the contents of working memory is used to guide thoughts and action. Our research utilizes EEG, reaction time, and fMRI data. |
Talya Sadeh
My lab investigates the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying Episodic Memory. Episodic memory is often described as (the perhaps uniquely-human) capacity to mentally go back in time and re-live events from our past (e.g., your Bar/Bat-Mitzvah or even yesterday’s lunch). Some of the major questions the lab explores are: Why do we forget things we once remembered? How is memory affected by processes that occur prior to learning? And how does social interaction shape episodic memory? We analyze large-scale datasets from various sources, including: fMRI, EEG and eye-movements' measurements. |
Tal Svoray
I study geopsychology - the field of spatial organization of psychological phenomena and the effect of environmental characteristics and social entities on psychological processes. I focus mainly on the effect of exposure-to-nature on positive and negative psychology. The research tools used in our lab include social network data (photos and text), geoinformatics data including satellite images as well as mobile app questionnaires and geostatistics. We currently have several projects on the effect of exposure-to-nature and connectedness-to-nature on well-being, the depressive niche and suicidality. |
Nirt Soffer-Dudek
I am a clinical psychologist. I am interested in unique states of consciousness, and their relation to psychopathology, stress, and trauma. In waking, these states include phenomena such as dissociative experiences and altered consciousness personality traits. In sleep, they include special dream and sleep experiences such as nightmares, recurring dreams, lucid dreams, sleep paralysis, and hypnagogic hallucinations. We analyze data from home-based sleep quality monitors as well as laboratory-measured physiological signals of stress, and examine how these relate to constructs of interest such as dissociation. |
Liat Tikotzky
My research focuses generally on the relationships between parenting and sleep. More specifically, my studies focus on the longitudinal relationships between the development of sleep patterns among infants and parental (both mothers’ and fathers’) sleep-related behaviors and cognitions, and on the links between maternal emotional distress and infant sleep . In all my studies I use daily-based objective (actigraphy) and subjective measures of sleep. |
Florina Uzefovsky
I study the biological basis of empathy in young children. The main questions our lab deals with are - how does empathy develop from infancy into childhood? How does biology interplay with environmental influences to shape development? Methods include observation of behavior as well as genetics, gene expression and hormone levels. We conduct analysis of complex longitudinal data, analysis of imaging data, can analyze data from Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS); and different combinations between these types of data. |