About

Nori Jacoby is an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Cornell University. His research focuses on the internal representations that support and shape sensory and cognitive abilities, and on how these representations are determined by both nature and nurture. He addresses these classic issues by applying machine learning techniques to behavioral experiments and expanding the scale and scope of experimental research through massive online experiments and fieldwork in locations around the globe. Nori completed his Ph.D. at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem under the supervision of Naftali Tishby and Merav Ahissar. He has held postdoctoral positions at MIT's Computational Audition Lab, UC Berkeley's Computational Cognitive Science Lab, and as a Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University. Before joining Cornell, he was a Research Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Communication
• Biology
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Psychology
• Evolutionary biology
• Neuroscience
• Speech recognition
• Social psychology
• Engineering ethics
• Cognitive psychology
• Literature
• Linguistics
• Engineering
• Cognitive science
• Internal medicine
• Art

Selected publications

• An Experimental Method to Study Opinion Diffusion in Human-AI Hybrid Societies

  ArXiv.org · 2026-05-09

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  As artificial intelligence increasingly mediates public discourse, it becomes important to understand how human-AI collectives shape opinion formation, deliberation, and democratic outcomes. We present a novel experimental method for studying opinion dynamics in hybrid human-AI social networks. Participants, human or AI, were embedded in $5\times5$ grid lattice networks and iteratively asked to select and revise statements on a given polarizing topic over eight rounds. We compared three conditions: human-only, AI-only, and hybrid networks with equal proportions of human and AI participants. Hybrid human-AI networks achieved the lowest final polarization while, in contrast, human-only networks exhibited higher polarization with lower neighbor agreement. We also ran additional experiments varying Large Language Model (LLM) prompt framing to explore whether instruction design might influence convergence patterns. Although these early findings are preliminary and cannot yet support broad generalizations, they highlight the potential value of experimental social networks for understanding opinion dynamics in human-AI hybrid societies.

  PublisherOA PDF

• Culture in psychology and neuroscience: Concepts, relevance, and empirical evidence in rhythm perception

  2026-01-07

  articleOpen access

  Perceptual systems adapt through individual experience across the lifespan, an ability referred to as plasticity. To understand perceptual plasticity, a promising avenue is to investigate how perception is shaped by cultural experience, as a process deeply embedded within collective practices of cultural production and social learning. The current review synthesizes findings from recent behavioral experiments investigating cross-cultural variation in rhythm perception. Specifically, these studies show that fundamental perceptual processes, such as event timing and rhythm categorization, display shared features but also systematic differences across cultural groups. Critically, these differences correlate with statistically prominent and socially relevant features of cultural production, revealing how perceptual systems are tuned to their music-cultural environments. Yet, how can cross-cultural differences in perception be related back to the collective practices that produce the diversity of cultural environments in the first place? To bridge this gap, we propose perceptual niche construction as an evolutionary approach that positions culture as both a source and a product of perceptual plasticity. That is, cultural experience tunes individual perception, yielding culturally diverse perceptual processes. These processes, in turn, create selection pressures shaping cultural production across nested timescales, resulting in diverse cultural environments. This approach presents implications for research in psychology and neuroscience, notably in proposing to operationalize culture as communities of learning and practice. Moreover, it highlights the relevance of contextually situated research, in view of accounting for the dynamic nature of culture-driven perceptual plasticity.

  PublisherDOI

• One test, many tongues: Surveying language proficiency across the globe

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2026-03-27

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Language influences our thinking and affects many aspects of cognition, from how we perceive the world to how we interact socially. Thus, objectively characterizing linguistic background is crucial for research in many areas, including second language acquisition, psycho-linguistics, and cognitive science. Traditional language proficiency tests, however, are manually composed by experts, limiting their scope for both lab and online settings. Here, we propose a pipeline that automatically derives a language proficiency test from a corpus of text and applies it to create new tests for 1,939 languages. Using this approach, we conducted a large-scale survey examining L1 and L2 proficiency across 34 countries, with participants tested on all 34 languages. Drawing from human ratings from 4,137 participants, our results validate that our test can effectively distinguish native speakers, second-language speakers, and nonspeakers within one minute, making it an effective tool for evaluating linguistic proficiency. We show that participants' linguistic and demographic backgrounds systematically influence both their language proficiency and their self-reported skills, and we map the prevalence of global languages, such as English and Spanish, among online participants. Moreover, we show that our vocabulary tests are strongly correlated with other linguistic competences-such as listening and writing-in a set of typologically varied languages, demonstrating our test is an efficient instrument to assess language proficiency. More broadly, our work offers a significant resource for investigating global variation in language skills and contributes to reducing the overreliance on the English language in the cognitive and social sciences.

  PublisherDOI

• An Experimental Method to Study Opinion Diffusion in Human-AI Hybrid Societies

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2026-05-09

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  As artificial intelligence increasingly mediates public discourse, it becomes important to understand how human-AI collectives shape opinion formation, deliberation, and democratic outcomes. We present a novel experimental method for studying opinion dynamics in hybrid human-AI social networks. Participants, human or AI, were embedded in $5\times5$ grid lattice networks and iteratively asked to select and revise statements on a given polarizing topic over eight rounds. We compared three conditions: human-only, AI-only, and hybrid networks with equal proportions of human and AI participants. Hybrid human-AI networks achieved the lowest final polarization while, in contrast, human-only networks exhibited higher polarization with lower neighbor agreement. We also ran additional experiments varying Large Language Model (LLM) prompt framing to explore whether instruction design might influence convergence patterns. Although these early findings are preliminary and cannot yet support broad generalizations, they highlight the potential value of experimental social networks for understanding opinion dynamics in human-AI hybrid societies.

  PublisherDOI

• Categorical rhythmic priors in macaques

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-12-29

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Rhythmic ability is a universal aspect of human cultures and sets the basis for musical rhythm perception and synchronization. While humans can synchronize movements to complex rhythms, it is unclear whether this capability extends to our primate ancestors. In this study, we explore whether primates can synchronize to complex rhythms and acquire rhythmic representations with generalizability akin to humans. Using controlled behavioral experiments, we provide evidence that monkeys not only can synchronize to short-long or long-short rhythms but also learn representations that generalize across a wide range of rhythm ratios and total durations. These results indicate ability to flexibly represent ratios within a relative timing framework is not exclusive to humans, but it is also present in monkeys. In addition, the produced intervals show a bias towards rhythmic categories. Notably, in an iterative tapping task, macaques and humans showed large priors for isochrony and integer ratios (2:1, 3:1). These results demonstrate a common biological foundation for rhythm synchronization in primates, extending our understanding of the shared cognitive mechanisms between primates and humans, and highlight the enormous potential of using monkeys to study the neurophysiological basis of complex rhythm perception.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Using LLMs to Advance the Cognitive Science of Collectives

  ArXiv.org · 2025-05-28

  preprintOpen access

  LLMs are already transforming the study of individual cognition, but their application to studying collective cognition has been underexplored. We lay out how LLMs may be able to address the complexity that has hindered the study of collectives and raise possible risks that warrant new methods.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Revealing rhythm categorization in human brain activity

  Science Advances · 2025-07-30 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  Humans across cultures show an outstanding capacity to perceive, learn, and produce musical rhythms. These skills rely on mapping the infinite space of possible rhythmic sensory inputs onto a finite set of internal rhythm categories. What is the nature of the brain processes underlying rhythm categorization? We used electroencephalography to measure brain activity as human participants listened to a continuum of rhythmic sequences characterized by repeating patterns of two interonset intervals. Using frequency and representational similarity analyses, we show that brain activity does not merely track the temporal structure of rhythmic inputs but, instead, produces categorical representation of rhythms. These neural rhythm categories arise automatically, independent of any motor- or timing-related tasks, yet exhibit strong similarity with categorization observed in overt behavior. Together, these results and methodological advances constitute a critical step toward understanding the biological roots and diversity of musical behaviors across cultures.

  PublisherDOI

• How constraints on editing affects cultural evolution

  Underline Science Inc. · 2025-06-18

  otherOpen access

  When is it beneficial to constrain creativity? Creativity thrives with freedom, but when people collaborate to create artifacts, there is tension between giving individuals freedom to revise, and protecting prior achievements. To test how imposing constraints may affect collective creativity, we performed cultural evolution experiments where participants collaborated to create melodies and images in chains. With melodies, we found that limiting step size (number of musical notes that can be changed) improved pleasantness ratings. Similar results were observed in cohorts of musicians, and with different selection regimes. This outcome was due to the tendency to overcrowd melodies. Interestingly, limiting step size in creating images consistently reduced pleasantness. These conflicting findings suggest that in domains such as music, where artifacts can be easily damaged, collective creativity may benefit from imposing small step sizes or limiting overcrowding. We discuss parallels with search algorithms and the evolution of conservative birdsong cultures.

  PublisherDOI

• Mechanisms of cultural diversity in urban populations

  Nature Communications · 2025-06-04 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Large cities exhibit greater cultural diversity. Due to limited data on individual behaviour, previous research could not discern whether this stems from demographic heterogeneity or enhanced individual cultural exploration. Analysing 250 million listening events from 2.5 million users across France, Brazil, and Germany, we investigate mechanisms driving urban cultural diversity. We assess the collective shared musical repertoire in each geographical area, while concurrently measuring individuals' music engagement breadth through listening histories. Cross-culturally, both collective diversity and individual breadth increase with population size, aligning with cultural evolution and urban scaling theories. While demographic factors such as age, gender, income, immigration, education, and social connections influence these trends, especially in highly populated areas, they do not fully explain the observed patterns. This suggests large cities are culturally diverse not only because they aggregate people from varied backgrounds but also due to greater opportunities created for cultural interactions and discovery.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Visual and Musical Aesthetic Preferences Across Cultures

  Underline Science Inc. · 2025-06-18

  otherOpen access

  Research on how humans perceive aesthetics in shapes, colours, and music has predominantly focused on Western populations, limiting our understanding of how cultural environments shape aesthetic preferences. We present a large-scale cross-cultural study examining aesthetic preferences across five distinct modalities extensively explored in the literature: shape, curvature, colour, musical harmony and melody. We gather 401,403 preference judgements from 4,835 participants across 10 countries, systematically sampling two-dimensional parameter spaces for each modality. The findings reveal both universal patterns and cultural variations. Preferences for shape and curvature cross-culturally demonstrate a consistent preference for symmetrical forms. While colour preferences are categorically consistent, ratio-like preferences vary across cultures. Musical harmony shows strong agreement in interval relationships despite differing regions of preference within the broad frequency spectrum, while melody shows the highest cross-cultural variation. These results suggest that aesthetic preferences emerge from an interplay between shared perceptual mechanisms and cultural learning.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Raja Marjieh

  Princeton University

  27 shared

• Manuel Anglada-Tort

  Goldsmiths University of London

  25 shared

• Pol van Rijn

  Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

  24 shared

• Thomas L. Griffiths

  24 shared

• Peter M. C. Harrison

  University of Cambridge

  23 shared

• Ofer Tchernichovski

  Hunter College

  22 shared

• Josh H. McDermott

  Harvard University

  20 shared

• Rainer Polak

  University of Oslo

  17 shared