PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Morteza Dehghani

Morteza Dehghani is a professor of psychology and computer science at the University of Southern California who applies machine learning and natural language processing to morality, prejudice and hate, and who now works on aligning large language models with human-like reasoning. He earned computer science degrees at UCLA and a Northwestern PhD in 2009, then joined USC's Institute for Creative Technologies in 2011. A 2018 study he led as corresponding author analyzed 18 million tweets from the 2015 Baltimore protests, and in 2022 he co-edited the Handbook of Language Analysis in Psychology. He became a full professor in 2023, was named a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology in 2024, and in 2025 coauthored a preprint linking LLM writing assistants to declines in linguistic diversity. Today he directs the Cognition, Alignment, and Learning in Machines (CALM) Laboratory and the Center for Computational Language Sciences at USC.

Works
191
Citations
4,152
h-index
35

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2003–2011

    Computer science at UCLA and Northwestern

    He earns a B.S. in 2003 and an M.S. in 2005 in computer science at UCLA. At Northwestern University, he completes an M.S. in 2007 and a PhD in computer science with a focus on cognitive science in 2009, followed by a postdoctorate in psychology from 2010 to 2011.

  2. 2011–2012

    ICT and an Air Force award

    He joins the University of Southern California in 2011 as a research scientist at the Institute for Creative Technologies. In 2012, he wins an Air Force Young Investigator Research Program grant to examine the role of religiosity in moral cognition, specifically the formation of sacred values, and to research computational models for analyzing sacred rhetoric.

  3. 2018–2019

    Protest study and CAREER Award

    In 2018, he is the corresponding author of a USC-led study that uses a deep neural network to detect moralized language in 18 million tweets from the 2015 Baltimore protests, and finds hourly arrests associated with moralized tweets posted in previous hours. In 2019, the Association for Psychological Science lists him among the recipients of National Science Foundation CAREER awards, with a plan to build computational methods to predict hate crimes.

  4. 2021

    Moral convergence and online extremism

    He coauthors the paper "Morally Homogeneous Networks and Radicalism" in Social Psychological and Personality Science with lead author Mohammad Atari, and USC News reports it in December 2021. The study finds that the degree of shared moral concerns within an online cluster predicts the number of hate speech messages its members post, first among users of the network Gab and again in the Reddit community Incels.

  5. 2022

    A language handbook and Google award

    He co-edits the Handbook of Language Analysis in Psychology with Ryan L. Boyd, a 630-page Guilford Press volume published in March 2022 on computerized text analysis methods for psychological questions. He also receives a Google Award for Inclusion Research in 2022.

  6. 2023–2024

    Full professor and SPSP Fellow

    After serving as an associate professor from 2020, he is promoted to full professor of psychology and computer science at USC in 2023. In 2024, he is named a Fellow of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, an honor that recognizes his work combining machine learning and natural language processing to uncover cognitive and psychological patterns in social discourse.

  7. 2025

    A study of LLM writing assistants

    In February 2025, he and nine coauthors, including Zhivar Sourati and Fred Morstatter, submit the arXiv preprint "The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models". Across three studies spanning seven datasets and over 880,000 texts, it links the widespread adoption of LLMs as writing assistants to declines in linguistic diversity.

  8. As of October 2026

    Directing the CALM Laboratory

    He is a professor of psychology, computer science and the Brain and Creativity Institute at USC, where he directs the Cognition, Alignment, and Learning in Machines (CALM) Laboratory. The lab aligns large language models with human-like reasoning styles such as System 1 and System 2 thinking, and he is also Director of the Center for Computational Language Sciences.

Career

  1. Since 2011University of Southern CaliforniaResearch Scientist
  2. 2010–2011Northwestern UniversityPostdoctorate in psychology

Education

  1. 2009Northwestern UniversityPhD
  2. 2007Northwestern UniversityM.S.
  3. 2005University of California, Los AngelesM.S.
  4. 2003University of California, Los AngelesB.S.

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the nomological network of morality varies across cultures2023 · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 276 citations
  2. Moralization in social networks and the emergence of violence during protests2018 · Nature Human Behaviour · 227 citationsWith Heng Ji
  3. Dictionaries and distributions: Combining expert knowledge and large scale textual data content analysis2017 · Behavior Research Methods · 177 citations
  4. Moral Foundations Twitter Corpus: A Collection of 35k Tweets Annotated for Moral Sentiment2020 · Social Psychological and Personality Science · 176 citations
  5. Purity homophily in social networks2016 · Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 172 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of Southern California. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. Universities had a net outflow of 2,068 moves in AI careersIncludes University of Southern California. Our estimates of career flows and median h-index across universities and companies in AI, including the role of joint appointments and earlier academic jobs.
  3. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes University of Southern California. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes University of Southern California. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Morteza Dehghani yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Morteza Dehghani - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. Morteza Dehghani - USC Dornsife dornsife.usc.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. ICT's Morteza Dehghani Wins AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award - Institute for Creative Technologies ict.usc.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. Social media posts may signal whether a protest will become violent - USC Today today.usc.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. Psychological Scientists Recognized With NSF Early-Career Awards - Association for Psychological Science psychologicalscience.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Hate speech and online extremism focus of USC study - USC News today.usc.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  7. Handbook of Language Analysis in Psychology guilford.com. Checked 20 October 2026.
  8. Morteza Dehghani - USC Dornsife news briefs dornsife.usc.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  9. The Shrinking Landscape of Linguistic Diversity in the Age of Large Language Models arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  10. Morteza Dehghani | SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind | UC Santa Barbara sagecenter.ucsb.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.
  11. Faculty - Center for Computational Language Sciences dornsife.usc.edu. Checked 20 October 2026.