Emma Gueorguieva

4th-Year Ph.D. Student · Social & Personality Psychology · UT Austin

I study how language reflects psychological processes and behavior, and how we can ethically develop emotionally intelligent AI systems.

I'm affiliated with the Computational Affective & Social Cognition Lab, the UT NLP Group, and the Consortium on Moral Decision-Making.

Email LinkedIn Google Scholar ORCID GitHub CV (PDF)

Research Areas

Computational Social Science Natural Language Processing Empathy & Emotion Human-AI Interaction Ethics & Responsible AI

Education

Ph.D., Social & Personality Psychology

University of Texas at Austin

Expected May 2028

M.A., Psychology

University of Texas at Austin · GPA: 4.0

May 2025

B.A. (Highest Honors), Psychology

University of Texas at Austin · Dean's Distinguished Graduate · GPA: 4.0

May 2023

Experience

Research Scientist Intern · Human-Centered AI

Toyota Research Institute · Los Altos, CA

May 2025 – Aug 2025

Research Scientist Intern

Receptiviti, Inc. · Toronto, ON

May 2022 – Aug 2022

Publications

AI generates well-liked but templatic empathic responses

Emma S. Gueorguieva, Hongli Zhan, Jina Suh, Javier Hernandez, Tatiana Lau, Junyi Jessy Li, Desmond C. Ong

arXiv preprint, 2026

[Paper]

Discourse Diversity in Multi-Turn Empathic Dialogue

Hongli Zhan, Emma S. Gueorguieva, Javier Hernandez, Jina Suh, Desmond C. Ong, Junyi Jessy Li

arXiv preprint, 2026

[Paper] [Code]

What can I say to help you? Language associated with successful extrinsic emotion regulation.

Shaina Munin, Olivia Jurkiewicz, Emma S. Gueorguieva, Christopher Oveis, Desmond C. Ong

Emotion, 2025

[Paper]

The Language of an Empathy-Inducing Narrative

Emma S. Gueorguieva, Tatiana Lau, Eliana Hadjiandreou, Desmond C. Ong

CogSci 2024 · 46th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

[Paper]

Words left behind: Tracking emotional changes in experimental and naturalistic texts across waves of the COVID-19 pandemic

Emma S. Gueorguieva, Kiki Adams, Molly Ireland

OSF preprint, 2022

[Paper]

News

Aug 2026 Attending the Summer Institute for Computational Social Science at Stanford University.

Jun 2026 Gave a talk at the AI & Social Research Conference at Penn State.

May 2026 Featured in Marginalia Science's Newsletter.

Mar 2026 Exhibited research at the SXSW EDU Expo.

May 2025 Began summer internship in Human-Centered AI @ Toyota Research Institute.

May 2025 Earned my Master of Arts in Psychology.

Mar 2025 Invited Speaker at SXSW Panel "Speaking the Same Language: What Makes a Social Brand?"

Oct 2025 Presented a poster at the Princeton Summit for Affective Science in Princeton, NJ.

Mar 2025 Gave a symposium talk at the Society for Affective Science in Portland, OR.

Jul 2024 Presented a poster at the Cognitive Science Society Conference in Rotterdam, NL.

Apr 2024 Presented a poster at the Multi-University Workshop at Toyota Research Institute in Los Altos, CA.

Jul 2023 Began my Ph.D. at UT Austin, advised by Dr. Desmond Ong.

May 2023 Earned my Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with Highest Honors.

Apr 2023 1 of 6 undergraduates to receive the UT Co-Op George H. Mitchell Award for Undergraduate Excellence.

Apr 2023 1 of 15 seniors to receive the Dean's Distinguished Graduate Award.

Apr 2023 Awarded a Florence V. Graduate Scholarship ($25,000).