Tilburg University · Methodology & Statistics

Computational Psychology &
Computational Methods Lab

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Experiments Data Computational Methods Human Behaviour
// ABOUT THE LAB

We use computation to study the human mind - and psychology to study computational models

The CPCM Lab brings together psychologists, computer scientists, linguists, and methodologists. We collect data in psychological experiments and apply techniques from natural language processing, machine learning, and statistical modelling to better understand human behaviour and the models that increasingly imitate it.

Q.01

How can computational methods enhance our understanding of the human mind and behaviour?

Q.02

How can psychological research methods inform our understanding of computational model behaviour?

Psychology Computer Science Neuroscience AI Linguistics Mathematics Law Cognitive Science
14+
Researchers across
career stages
8+
Disciplines
represented
2·
Guiding
questions
Open
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Our work is cross-disciplinary. We treat language as data, models as participants, and experiments as the connective tissue between the two.

- LAB · ETHOS
// LAB UPDATES

What's currently happening in the lab

02 / 2026

Hiring · Two 4-year PhD positions on the ERC JUSTICE project

Application deadline: 22 March 2026.

11 / 2025

New Master Track launched

The 2-year master track AI for Psychological Research is now open. If you're interested in applying or have questions, please reach out.

10 / 2025

Special issue · Legal & Criminological Psychology

Our special issue on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence and New Technologies on Legal and Criminological Psychology is open for submissions. For questions, contact Bennett or Riccardo Loconte.

// PEOPLE

The humans behind the methods

Lab Director Bennett Kleinberg

Bennett Kleinberg

Computational methods · ML for behaviour · CSS foundations

Computational methods in psychology, machine learning for behavioural data, and methodological foundations of computational social science.

Postdoc Riccardo Loconte

Riccardo Loconte

Opportunities and challenges of automated verbal deception detection

This project investigates how and to what extent computational approaches stemming from machine learning and natural language processing can advance verbal deception detection at large-scale.

Doctoral Researcher Sanne Peereboom

Sanne Peereboom

Assessing the artificial mind through the marriage of natural language processing and psychometrics

My project is focused on understanding generative language models through psychological measurement frameworks. My work focuses on if – and how – psychometric approaches can be used to validly assess the behaviour of these models.

External Doctoral Researcher John Caffier

John Caffier

Computational methods to measure, understand, and influence prosocial behavior and trust

In our project, we apply and develop methods and tools to measure and model the dynamics of trust and prosocial behaviors - individually and at scale. Also, we explore how LLMs, apps, and other technologies, as well as humans, can actively influence these behaviors in potentially harmful or potentially constructive directions.

Doctoral Researcher Rasoul Norouzi Nikjeh

Rasoul Norouzi Nikjeh

Text-mining methods for theory development in psychological and social science research

My PhD project develops text mining methods to automatically detect and parse causal claims in social science texts. It turns unstructured prose into structured who-causes-what representations and encodes them as Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). This lets researchers identify recurring causal patterns, generate testable hypotheses, and conduct transparent evidence synthesis and theory refinement.

Doctoral Researcher Jennifer Chen

Jennifer Chen

Adolescent-Specific Assessment and Psychotherapy (ASAP): Innovating Idiographic Methods for Youth-Tailored Care

Doctoral Researcher Tijn van Hoesel

Tijn van Hoesel

Spin: Questionable Research Practices in Scientific Reporting

Investigating the concept of spin (primarily found in biomedicine) and relating it to the concept of questionable research practices (primarily found in psychology). Investigating the prevalence and impact of spin in psychological research.

Doctoral Researcher Weng Lam Ao

Weng Lam Ao

Understanding decision-making in transport behaviour through social media data

Doctoral Researcher Lucca Pfründer

Lucca Pfründer

Human adversarial machine learning on text data for psychological inference

This project investigates how research designs from adversarial machine learning - when applied to NLP tasks, and when extended to human adversaries and human targets - can inform psychological theory for “wicked” problems such as deception.

Visiting Doctoral Researcher Qian Chen

Qian Chen

Decoding distorted interpretations of ambiguity from text data

Everyday life is full of ambiguous social situations, and biased / inflexible interpretations of these situations are linked to depression and anxiety. Our work focuses on leveraging linguistic indicators of interpretation processes to improve understanding, measurement, and intervention methods that are more ecologically valid and translatable to real-world mental health.

Visiting Doctoral Researcher Nicola Rossberg

Nicola Rossberg

Ad-Hoc Machine Learning Explainability through Psychometrics

I aim to improve the quality of explanations generated by machine learning models through an interpretability by design approach. I am designing and testing a scale to measure understandability at feature level in order to favour understandable features during machine learning model training and hence create better explanations ad-hoc.

Thesis · Research Assistant Jari Zegers

Jari Zegers

Psychological theories of deception and deception detection

As part of my master’s thesis, this project aims to improve our understanding of deception and deception detection from a psychological perspective.

Research Assistant Jonas Festor

Jonas Festor

Simulated vs. genuine empathy

This project tries to disentangle human perceptions of LLM generated empathetic text from the ‘objective’ convincingness. This study builds on and tries to extend the investigation of stochastic empathy.

Research Assistant Ivo Snels

Ivo Snels

Simulated vs. genuine empathy

This project tries to disentangle human perceptions of LLM generated empathetic text from the ‘objective’ convincingness. This study builds on and tries to extend the investigation of stochastic empathy.

Open Position

Maybe you?

Interested in joining CPCM Lab

Explore current opportunities for doctoral projects, thesis work, and internships.

// RESEARCH

Four themes, one shared foundation

We investigate how computational methods can enhance our understanding of the human mind - and how psychological research can inform our understanding of computational models.

Deception Detection

Integrating experimental data and computational methods to address the "hard problems" of deception research.

  • Examining how human adversarial machine learning can inform cognitive theories of deception.
  • Combining controlled experiments with large-scale text analysis.

Methodological advancements

Developing the methods needed to advance computational psychology research.

  • Secure, scalable methods for text anonymisation - e.g. Textwash.
  • Sample-size estimation algorithms for supervised machine learning.

Machine Behaviour

Treating models as objects of study in their own right.

  • Understanding stochastic humanness of large language models through experimental research.
  • Using formal psychometric modelling to study how AI behaviour reflects or diverges from human cognition.

Computational Psychology with NLP

Using computational text analysis to study and predict psychological constructs in humans - including cynicism, emotion, and deception.

  • Language as a window into psychological process.
  • Bridging classical psychology with modern NLP pipelines.
// PHD ALUMNI

Where the lab's graduates went next

2021
Dr. Isabelle van der Vegt Understanding and predicting threats of violence using computational linguistics
2023
Dr. Felix Soldner Detecting and mitigating online customer fraud
2023
Dr. Maximilian Mozes Adversarial perturbations in natural language processing
2023
Dr. Arianna Trozze New forms of financial crime
2025
Dr. Daniel Hammocks Information prioritisation for horizon scanning using data-science techniques
// JOIN THE LAB

Apply to join the lab

Lab members are typically postdocs, PhD students, thesis students, or research interns. These are the most common pathways into the lab, aligned with career stage and project needs.

PATH · 01

Thesis projects

Advertised inside the programmes we are involved in. Watch for openings if you're enrolled.

PATH · 02

PhD positions

Several routes - funded university posts, joint PhDs with another institution, or self-funded. Funded positions are publicly advertised.

PATH · 03

Research internship

Identify a topic that aligns with the lab and overlaps with at least one current member, then email Bennett. Internships should run at least six months.

// NEWSLETTER

Always-on newsletter updates

Prefer email updates? Sign up to the CPCM newsletter here for concise news on publications, opportunities, and talks.

// CONTACT

Get in touch

Computational Psychology and Computational Methods Lab For potential collaborations, internships, visits, or programme questions - Email Bennett directly. We try to read everything; response times may vary depending on current academic commitments.

bennett.kleinberg@tilburguniversity.edu

// VISITING ADDRESS

Dr. Bennett Kleinberg Department of Methodology & Statistics
Tilburg University
The Netherlands