Since 2022, I have worked as a User Researcher at Spotify, where I have studied various aspects of users' needs and experience with regard to music personalization.
By academic training, I am a cognitive and developmental psychologist. My research interest has been in young children's social cognition. In past work, I have studied young children's concepts of and inferences about social relationships. I have focused especially on friendship, dominance, and prestige.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/narges-afshordi
Before joining Spotify, I was a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at Harvard University. From 2018-2021, I was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development. In 2018, I completed my doctoral studies at Harvard University's Department of Psychology.
I grew up in Tehran, Iran, and attended Sharif University as an undergraduate where I studied computer engineering. During a master's degree in artificial intelligence, I became increasingly fascinated by how infants and young children—as opposed to algorithms—learn. As a result, I decided to pursue developmental psychology. I went on to complete a master's in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis before starting doctoral studies at Harvard.
I have worn and continue to wear several professional hats, but at the core, I am a behavioral researcher who enjoys finding creative and rigorous ways to answer interesting questions. In case you are wondering, my name is pronounced /NAR-guess/.
I have used behavioral methods to study what could be termed ‘relationship cognition’ in young children. This means studying how they conceptualize, recognize, and reason about social relationships, especially from a third-person perspective. I am particularly interested in friendship, dominance, and prestige. More generally, I am also interested in inferences that children make about affiliation and connection between individuals from different kinds of information.
The following publications are provided for personal use.
PUBLISHED ARTICLES
* Joint first authors
Afshordi*, N., Li*, Pearl, Koenig, M. (accepted at Developmental Psychology). Trusting information from friends: Adults expect it but preschoolers don’t. Preprint available at https://psyarxiv.com/rsxb2 [Here's a short video presentation of this work that I prepared for a virtual conference.]
Afshordi, N., & Liberman, Z. (2020). Keeping friends in mind: Development of friendship concepts in early childhood. Social Development. [PDF] [Link]
Kajanus*, A.E., Afshordi*, N., Warneken, F. (2019) Children’s understanding of dominance and prestige in China and the UK. Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(1), 23-34. [PDF] [Link]
Afshordi, N. (2019). Children’s inferences about friendship based on reported information. Child Development, 90(3), 719-727. [PDF] [Link]
Afshordi*, N., Sullivan*, K. & Markson, L. (2018). Children’s third-party understanding of communicative interactions in a foreign language. Collabra: Psychology, 4(1). [PDF] [Link] [Data]
Nilipour, R., Sima Shirazi, T., Afshordi, N., & Kauschke, C. (2013). Object and Action Naming: A Study on Persian-Speaking Children. Iranian Rehabilitation Journal, 11(17), 28-34. [PDF]
MANUSCRIPTS
Afshordi, N., Carey, S. (under invited revision). Preschoolers’ recognition of and inferences from observed imitation. Preprint available at https://psyarxiv.com/zmsx3/
Afshordi, N. (under revision) Preschoolers do not generalize dominance roles from one situation to another. Preprint available at https://psyarxiv.com/ujqnw/
Afshordi, N., Richter, N., & Distefano, R. (in preparation). From Lab to Life: Individual differences in preschoolers’ concepts of friendship and hierarchy
Afshordi *, N., Li *, P.H., Koenig, M. (in preparation). Is seeing believing? Children’s and adults’ evaluation of evidence vs. testimony