Michal Kosinski

Associate Professor, Organizational Behavior

Michal Kosinski

Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior

Academic Area:

Research Statement

Michal Kosinski’s research focuses on individual differences in behavior, preferences, and performance. Specifically, he is interested in the mechanisms linking psychological traits (such as personality) with a broad range of organizational and social outcomes, including job performance, person-job fit, consumer preferences, and ideology, as well as the expression and recognition of psychological traits from behavioral residues, language, and facial features. Kosinski conducts his research using a range of computational methods, including machine learning, data mining, and observational studies involving millions of participants.

Research Interests

  • Computational Social Science
  • Big Data
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Personality and Individual Differences
  • Psychological Assessment
  • Consumer Preferences
  • Facial Features

Bio

Professor Kosinski received his PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge in 2014. He was the deputy director of the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, a researcher at Microsoft Research, and a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford’s Computer Science Department.

Kosinski’s research has had a significant impact on both academia and the industry. In pursuing his diverse research program, he has published over 70 papers in leading journals including Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Machine Learning, Psychological Science, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. They have been cited over 6,000 times.

Also, he had nothing to do with Cambridge Analytica.

Academic Degrees

  • Phd in Psychology, University of Cambridge, 2014
  • MPhil in Psychometrics, University of Cambridge, 2009
  • MSC in Psychology, Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2008

Academic Appointments

  • Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford GSB, 2019–present
  • Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior, Stanford GSB, 2015–19
  • Postdoctoral Scholar, Computer Science Dept., Stanford University, 2014–15
  • Visiting Lecturer, Department of Mathematics, University of Namur, 2012–13

Professional Experience

  • Deputy Director, University of Cambridge Psychometrics Center, 2010–14
  • Researcher, Microsoft Research, 2010–14

Awards and Honors

  • Business School Trust Faculty Scholar for 2019–20
  • GSB Trust Faculty Scholar for 2018–19
  • GSB Trust Faculty Scholar for 2017–18
  • Rising Star, Association for Psychological Science, 2015
  • Top 100 Papers that Most Caught the Public Imagination (22nd), Altmetrics, 2015
  • Open Innovation Award, Accenture, 2015
  • One of the Top 50 Most Influential People in Big Data, DataIQ and IBM, 2013
  • Top 100 Papers that Most Caught the Public Imagination (9th), Altmetrics, 2013
  • Top 100 Papers that Most Caught the Public Imagination (21st), Altmetrics, 2013

Publications

Journal Articles

Gordon D. A. Brown, Lukasz Walasek, Timothy L. Mullett, Edika G. Quispe-Torreblanca, Corey L. Fincher, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
July 2023
Salvatore Giorgi, Khoa Le Nguyen, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Margaret L. Kern, David. B. Yaden, Michal Kosinski, Martin E. P. Seligman, Lyle H. Ungar, H. Andrew Schwartz, Gregory Park
Journal of Personality
June 2022 Vol. 90 Issue 3 Pages 405–425
Pin Pin Tea-makorn, Michal Kosinski
Scientific Reports
October 2020 Vol. 10
SC Matz, RE Appel, Michal Kosinski
Current Opinion in Psychology
February 2020 Vol. 31 Pages 116–121
Vivek Kullkarni, Margaret L. Kern, David Stillwell, Michal Kosinski, Sandra Matz, Lyle Ungar, Steven Skiena, H. Andrew Schwartz
PLoS ONE
November 28, 2018 Vol. 13 Issue 11
Danilo Garcia, Karl Drejing, Clara Amato, Michal Kosinski, Sverker Sikstrom
Frontiers in Psychology
September 13, 2018 Vol. 9
J.M. Rohrer, B. Egloff, Michal Kosinski, S.C. Schmukle
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
August 2018 Vol. 115 Issue 2 Pages 304–320
Teresa Gil-Lopez, Cuihua Shen, Grace Benefield, Nicholas Palomares, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell
Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
May 1, 2018 Vol. 23 Issue 2 Pages 127-145
Michal Kosinski, Yilun Wang
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
February 2018 Vol. 114 Issue 2 Pages 246–257
Lushi Chen, Tao Gong, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, Robert L. Davidson
PLoS ONE
November 14, 2017 Vol. 12 Issue 11
Michal Kosinski
Psychological Science
November 1, 2017 Vol. 28 Issue 11 Pages 1675-1682
S.C. Matz, Michal Kosinski, G. Nave, D. J. Stillwell
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
November 2017 Vol. 114 Issue 48 Pages 12714-12719
Gilad Feldman, Huiwen Lian, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell
Social Psychological and Personality Science
September 1, 2017 Vol. 8 Issue 7 Pages 816-826
David B. Yaden, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Margaret L. Kern, Laura K. Smith, Anneke Buffone, David J. Stillwell, Michal Kosinski, Lyle H. Ungar, Martin E. P. Seligman, H. Andrew Schwartz
Social Psychological and Personality Science (forthcoming)
August 22, 2017
Wu Youyou, David Stillwell, Andrew Schwartz, Michal Kosinski
Psychological Science
January 1, 2017 Vol. 28 Issue 3 Pages 1-9
Michal Kosinski, Yilun Wang, Himabindu Lakkaraju, Jure Leskovec
Psychological Methods
December 2016 Vol. 21 Issue 4 Pages 493-506
Vaishali Mahalingam, Michael Palkovics, Michal Kosinski, Iva Cek, David Stillwell
Assessment
November 24, 2016 Pages 1-20
Becky Inkster, David Stillwell, Michal Kosinski, Peter Jones
Lancet Psychiatry
November 2016 Vol. 3 Issue 11 Pages 1087-1090
David M. Greenberg, Michal Kosinski, David J. Stillwell, Brian L. Monteiro, Daniel J. Levitin, Peter J. Rentfrow
Social Psychological and Personality Science
August 2016 Vol. 7 Issue 6 Pages 597–605
Golnoosh Farnadi, Geetha Sitaraman, Shanu Sushmita, Michal Kosinski, Fabio Celli, David Stillwell, Sergio Davalos, Marie-Francine Moens, Martine De Cock
User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction
June 2016 Vol. 26 Issue 2 Pages 109-142
Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell
Journal of Personality
June 2016 Vol. 84 Issue 3 Pages 335-347
Michal Kosinski, Gregory Park, David Bryce Yaden, H. Andrew Schwartz, Margaret L. Kern, Johannes C. Eichaedt, David Stillwell, Lyle H. Ungar, Martin E.P. Seligman
PLOS | One
May 25, 2016
Michal Kosinski, Claire M. Gillan, Robert Whelan, Elizabeth A. Phelps, Nathaniel D. Daw
eLIFE Sciences
March 1, 2016 Vol. 5 Pages 1-24
Michal Kosinski, Sandra C. Matz, Samuel D. Gosling, Vesselin Popov, David Stillwell
Monitor on Psychology
March 2016 Vol. 47 Issue 3 Pages 70
Andrew Schwartz, Maarten Sap, Margaret L. Kern, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Adam Kapelner, Megha Agrawal, Eduardo Blanco, Lukasz Dziurzynski, Gregory Park, David Stillwell, Michal Kosinski, Martin E.P. Seligman, Lyle H. Ungar
Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing
2016
G. Park, A. Schwartz, M. Sap, M.L. Kern, E. Weingarten, J.C. Eichstaedt, J. Berger, D.J. Stillwell, Michal Kosinski, L.H. Ungar, M.E.P. Seligman
Journal of Personality
December 28, 2015
Michal Kosinski
2015 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing
December 17, 2015
MP Wilmot, Michael P. Wilmot, Jack W. Kostal, David Stillwell, Michal Kosinski
Assessment
November 23, 2015 Pages 1-15
Michal Kosinski, Sandra M. Matz, Samuel D. Gosling, Vesselin Popov, David Stillwell
American Psychologist
September 2015 Vol. 7- Issue 6 Pages 543-556
David M. Greenberg, Simon Baron-Cohen, David J. Stillwell, Michal Kosinski, Peter J. Rentfrow
PLOS One
July 22, 2015 Vol. 10 Issue 7
Michal Kosinski
Cyberpsychol Behavior and Social Networking
July 2015 Vol. 18 Issue 7 Pages 373-379
Michal Kosinski, Gregory Park, Andrew H. Schwartz, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Margaret Kern, David J Stillwell, Lyle H Ungar, Martin E. P. Seligman
Automatic personality assessment through social media language
June 2015 Vol. 108 Issue 6 Pages 934-952
Jinkyunk Na, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
April 21, 2015 Vol. 46 Issue 3 Pages 355-370
Susan Collins, Yizhou Sun, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, Natasha Markuzon
International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling, and Prediction
April 2015 Vol. 9021 Pages 24-33
Wu Youyou, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
January 27, 2015 Vol. 112 Issue 4 Pages 1036–1040
Michal Kosinski, Ryan L. Boyd, Steven R. Wilson, James W. Pennebaker, David J. Stillwell, Rada Mihalcea
Proceedings of the Ninth International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media
2015
Michal Kosinski, Renaud Lambiotte
Proceedings of the IEEE
December 2014 Vol. 102 Issue 12
Michal Kosinski
International Journal of Social Research Methodology
September 22, 2014 Vol. 19 Issue 1 Pages 2016
Michal Kosinski, Yoram Bachrach, PushMeet Kohli, David Stillwell, Thore Graepel
Machine Learning
June 2014 Vol. 95 Issue 3 Pages 357-380
Michal Kosinski, Qiwei He, Cees A.W. Glas, David J. Stillwell, Bernard P. Veldkamp
Computers in Human Behavior
April 2014 Vol. 33 Pages 69-78
Michal Kosinski, N. Wang, D. Stillwell, J. Rust
Social Indicators Research
January 2014 Vol. 115 Issue 1 Pages 483-491
Maarten Sap, Michal Kosinski, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Gregory Park
Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (Conference)
January 2014
Michal Kosinski, Margaret L. Kern, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Andrew H. Schwartz, Gregory Park, Lyle H. Ungar, David J. Stillwell, Lukasz Dziurzynski, Martin E.P. Seligman
Developmental Psychology
January 2014 Vol. 50 Issue 1 Pages 178-188
Michal Kosinski, Yoram Bachrach, Thore Graepel, Pushmeet Kohli, David Stillwell
Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems(AAMAS)
2014
Michal Kosinski, Vaishali Mahalingam, David Stillwell, John Rust, Aleksandr Kogan
Social Psychological and Personality Science
December 11, 2013 Vol. 5 Issue 5 Pages 573-583
Michal Kosinski, Margaret L. Kern, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Andrew H. Schwartz, Lukasz Dziurznski, Lyle H. Ungar, David J. Stillwell, Stephanie M. Ramones, Martin E.P. Seligman
Assessment
December 8, 2013 Vol. 2 Issue 2 Pages 158-169
Michal Kosinski, Peter J. Rentfrow, Samuel D. Gosling, Markus Jokela, David J. Stillwell, Jeff Potter
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
December 2013 Vol. 105 Issue 6 Pages 996-1012
Michal Kosinski, H. Andrew Schwartz, Johannes C. Eichstaedt, Margaret L. Kern, Lukasz Dziurzynski, Staphanie M. Ramones, Megha Agrawal, Achal Shah, David Stillwell, Martin E. Seligman, Lyle H. Ungar
PLOS | One
September 25, 2013 Vol. 8 Issue 9
Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, Thore Graepel
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
April 9, 2013 Vol. 110 Issue 15 Pages 5802–5805
Michal Kosinski, Peter J. Rentfrow, Lewis R. Goldberg, David J. Stillwell, Samuel D. Gosling, Daniel J. Levitin
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal
December 2012 Vol. 30 Issue 2 Pages 161-185
Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell, Pushmeet Kohli, Yoram Bachrach, Thore Graepel
Web Science '12
June 2012
Michal Kosinski, Yoram Bachrach, Gjergji Kasneci, Jurgen Van-Gael, Thore Graepel
Web Science
2012

Books

John Rust, Michal Kosinski, David Stillwell
Routledge
2021

Book Chapters

Michal Kosinski, S. Matz, F. Chan, M. Tkalčič
Emotions and Personality in Personalized Systems
2016
Michal Kosinski, Kyung Chris T Han
Multistage Testing
January 2013

Conferences, Talks & Speaking Engagements

Our Twitter Profiles, Our Selves: Predicting Personality with Twitter

Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Social Computing, SocialCom, 2011

The Personality of Popular Facebook Users

Proceedings of ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW), 2012

Crowd IQ - Aggregating Opinions to Boost Performance

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), 2012

Facebook and Privacy: The Balancing Act of Personality, Gender, and Relationship Currency

Proceedings of AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), 2012

myPersonality project: Example of successful utilization of online social networks for large-scale social research

International Conference on Mobile Systems (MobiSys), 2012

Psychological Aspects of Social Communities

Proceedings of ASE International Conference on Social Computing (SocialCom), 2012

Personality and Patterns of Facebook Usage

ACM Web Science Conference (WebSci), 2012

Mining Facebook Data for Predictive Personality Modeling

Proceedings of AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), 2013

Relating Personality Types with User Preferences in Multiple Entertainment Domains

Multiple Entertainment Domains In Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Emotions and Personality in Personalized Services (EMPIRE), 2013

Workshop on Computational Personality Recognition

Proceedings of AAAI International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), 2013

Inferring the Demographics of Search Users

Proceedings of ACM International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW), 2013

Toward Personality Insights from Language Exploration in Social Media

AAAI Spring Symposium: Analyzing Microtext, 2013

How are you doing? Emotions and Personality in Facebook

Proceedings of 22nd International Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP), 2014

Stanford GSB Affiliations

In the Media

Insights by Stanford Business

December 05, 2023
New ideas never go out of season.
October 24, 2023
On tests designed to trick humans, newer language models exhibit more complex powers of reasoning.
April 05, 2023
A researcher’s experiments raise uncomfortable questions about the rapid evolution of large language models.
August 09, 2021
Michal Kosinski talks about exposing the dangers of new technologies and the controversies that come with it.
November 20, 2020
Access to superabundant data has transformed the methods of scholastic inquiry — and possibly the basic tenets of inquiry itself.
April 12, 2018
The researchers who warned about abuses of Facebook data show how psychological profiling gets results.
December 04, 2017
Readers keyed into humor’s workplace value, the secret to improving communication skills, and advice from Sheryl Sandberg and Marc Andreessen.
August 14, 2017
Should your digital footprint be public?
May 09, 2017
In part two of a three part series, a data scientist explores how artificial intelligence developed a mind of its own.
May 09, 2017
The human mind will outsmart AI in the end, says Michal Kosinski in the final piece of a three part series.
May 09, 2017
In part one of a three part series, a Stanford GSB professor discusses a controversial algorithm that knows more about you than your best friend.
January 17, 2017
A study of “digital footprints” suggests that you’re probably drawn to personalities a lot like yours.
December 06, 2016
Reading recommendations from the Stanford GSB community.
July 29, 2016
Researchers find a new way to examine your musical taste, with implications for the music and health care industries.
October 08, 2015
Social media offers researchers a window into the human experience.
August 27, 2015
A Stanford scholar says social media reveals your most intimate personality traits.

School News

February 27, 2018
“Effective leaders in the digital age will need to be mindful of the social consequences of technology.”
September 13, 2017
The paper warns that AI can detect sexual orientation from facial images. From Michal Kosinski, assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford GSB.
October 06, 2015
New faculty and lecturers offer unique perspectives and experience to augment program offerings.