Rachit Dubey
Email ▪ google scholar ▪ CV ▪ BlueSky
Here's a tribute written in the memory of my friend who got me started into research.

I am an Assistant Professor at UCLA in the Department of Communication. Previously, I was a postdoc at MIT Sloan Marketing. Before then, I received my PhD in Computer Science at Princeton University, advised by Tom Griffiths. My work has received various awards, including the 2024 SfNC dissertation award, APS Rising Star Award and the 2025 Grand Prize of the NOMIS and Science Young Explorer Award.

Research Summary

I am a computational cognitive scientist, working at the intersection of cognition, AI, and policy. My lab, the Computational Cognitive Policy Lab, focuses on two core questions. First, we study how our minds fail to notice or act on long-term threats such as climate change and technology dependence. Second, we employ AI and machine learning tools to design human-centric policies - policies that reflect diverse perspectives and are more likely to gain public support. My lab regularly collaborates with policymakers and agencies to help translate these insights into scalable action.

Publications

AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance

Grace Liu, Brian Christian, Tsvetomira Dumbalska, Michiel A. Bakker, and Rachit Dubey. Under review.

The normalization of (almost) everything ★ Grand Prize, NOMIS & Science

Rachit Dubey (2025). Science.

Interviews Science magazine, CBC Quirks & Quarks, AAAS news

Binary climate data visuals amplify perceived impact of climate change

Grace Liu, Jake Snell, Tom Griffiths, and Rachit Dubey (2025). Nature Human Behavior.

Media Guardian, Grist, Gizmodo, UCLA Newsroom, Legal Planet
Op-eds New Scientist, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Web r/climate, Slashdot, Bluesky

AI-generated visuals of car-free US cities help improve support for sustainable policies

Rachit Dubey, Matthew Hardy, Thomas Griffiths, and Rahul Bhui (2024). Nature Sustainability.

Media Bloomberg, MIT Ideas Made to Matter, Washington Post

Having multiple selves helps learning agents explore and adapt in complex changing worlds

Zack Dulberg, Rachit Dubey, Isabel Berwian, and Jonathan Cohen (2023). PNAS.

Media Psychology Today, Princeton News, Tech Xplore

The pursuit of happiness: A reinforcement learning perspective on habituation and comparisons

Rachit Dubey, Tom Griffiths, and Peter Dayan (2022). PLOS Computational Biology.

Media Vox, Phys.org, Neurologica, Deutschlandfunk, NatGeo

Reconciling novelty and complexity through a rational analysis of curiosity Spotlight, Trends in Cog Sci

Rachit Dubey and Tom Griffiths (2020). Psychological Review.

2026

Aha! moments correspond to metacognitive prediction errors in press

Dubey, R., Ho, M., Mehta, H., & Griffiths, T.L. Cognition.

2025

The normalization of (almost) everything ★ Grand Prize, NOMIS & Science

Dubey, R. (2025). Science.

Binary climate data visuals amplify perceived impact of climate change

Liu, G., Snell, J., Griffiths, T.L., & Dubey, R. (2025). Nature Human Behavior.

When to keep trying and when to let go: Benchmarking optimal quitting

Sukhov, N.*, Dubey, R.*, Duke, A., & Griffiths, T.L. (2025). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Adapting to loss: A computational model of grief

Dulberg, Z., Dubey, R., & Cohen, J. (2025). Psychological Review.

Leveraging AI to advance psychological research for climate policy

Yu, D., Thompson, B.D., & Dubey, R. (2025). Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

2024

AI-generated visuals of car-free US cities help improve support for sustainable policies

Dubey, R., Hardy, M., Griffiths, T.L., & Bhui, R. (2024). Nature Sustainability.

Learning from and about scientists: Consensus messaging shapes perceptions of climate change and climate scientists

Orchinik, R., Dubey, R., Gershman, S., Powell, D., & Bhui, R. (2024). PNAS Nexus.

Why context should matter

Bhui, R. & Dubey, R. (2024). Decision.

2023

Having "multiple selves" helps learning agents explore and adapt in complex changing worlds

Dulberg, Z., Dubey, R., Berwian, I., & Cohen, J. (2023). PNAS.

Learning about scientists from climate consensus messaging

Orchinik, R., Dubey, R., Powell, D., Gershman, S., & Bhui, R. (2023). Proceedings of the 45th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

2022

The pursuit of happiness: A reinforcement learning perspective on habituation and comparisons

Dubey, R., Griffiths, T.L., & Dayan, P. (2022). PLOS Computational Biology.

If it's important, then I'm curious: Increasing perceived usefulness stimulates curiosity

Dubey, R., Griffiths, T.L., & Lombrozo, T. (2022). Cognition.

Modularity benefits reinforcement learning agents with competing homeostatic drives

Dulberg, Z., Dubey, R., Berwian, I.M., & Cohen, J.D. (2022). Proceedings of the 5th Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making.

2021

Curiosity is contagious: A social influence intervention to induce curiosity

Dubey, R.*, Mehta, H.*, & Lombrozo, T. (2021). Cognitive Science.

2020

Reconciling novelty and complexity via a rational analysis of curiosity Spotlight, Trends in Cog Sci

Dubey, R. & Griffiths, T.L. (2020). Psychological Review.

Understanding exploration in humans and machines by formalizing the function of curiosity

Dubey, R. & Griffiths, T.L. (2020). Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences.

Connecting context-specific adaptation in humans to meta-learning

Dubey, R.*, Grant, E.*, Luo, M.*, Narasimhan, K., & Griffiths, T.L. (2020). arXiv:2011.13782.

2019

If it's important, then I am curious: A value-based intervention method to induce curiosity

Dubey, R., Griffiths, T.L., & Lombrozo, T. (2019). Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

2018

Investigating human priors for playing video games

Dubey, R., Agrawal, P., Pathak, D., Griffiths, T.L., & Efros, A.A. (2018). 35th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML).

Long oral presentation (8% acceptance rate)

Your liking is my curiosity: A social popularity intervention to induce curiosity

Mehta, H.*, Dubey, R.*, & Lombrozo, T. (2018). Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

2017

A rational analysis of curiosity

Dubey, R. & Griffiths, T.L. (2017). Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society.

Approaches to understanding visual illusions

Soon, C.S., Dubey, R., Ananyev, E., & Hsieh, P.J. (2017). In Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision. Springer.

2015 & earlier

What makes an object memorable?

Dubey, R.*, Peterson, J.*, Khosla, A., Yang, M.H., & Ghanem, B. (2015). Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV).

Improving saliency models by predicting human fixation patches

Dubey, R., Dave, A., & Ghanem, B. (2014). Asian Conference on Computer Vision (ACCV).

Do humans fixate on interest points?

Dave, A.*, Dubey, R.*, & Ghanem, B. (2012). 21st IEEE International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR).

A depth camera based fall recognition system for the elderly

Dubey, R., Ni, B., & Moulin, P. (2012). International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition (ICIAR).