Deena Weisberg, PhD
Associate Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences | College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Villanova University
- Villanova PA
Deena Weisberg, PhD, studies imaginative cognition and scientific thinking in young children and adults.
Media
Areas of Expertise
Biography
Dr. Weisberg earned her doctorate from Yale University and received postdoctoral training at Rutgers University and at Temple University. Her research interests include scientific thinking and reasoning in children and adults, the development of imaginative cognition and the roles that the imagination plays in learning. Her work has been published in a variety of scholarly journals, including Science and Cognition, and has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation.
Education
Stanford University
BS
Symbolic Systems
2003
Yale University
PhD
Psychology
2008
Select Media Appearances
AI Stories Preferred to Human-Written Ones
BBC
2026-08-04
Readers gave the highest ratings to stories created by artificial intelligence (AI), believing they had been written by humans, according to new research... Senior author Dr. Deena Weisberg, from the department of psychological and brain sciences at Villanova University, said: "I'd say that public assumptions about AI's capabilities are increasingly out of date."
AI-Generated Stories Rated Better Quality Than Human-Written Ones, Study Finds
The Guardian
2026-08-04
In a study published in the journal Judgment and Decision Making, 1,682 adults were asked to read one of six short stories, three of which were written by humans and three by ChatGPT... Participants who read an AI-generated story rated it as more absorbing and of higher quality than those who read a story written by a human. However, participants gave higher ratings to stories they had been told were written by people... Weisberg, who is herself a creative writer, said that did not mean writing should be left to AI, noting that novels produced by tech were probably going to be different from those written by humans.
We Want to Love Human Storytelling, but AI Is Simply More Engaging, Study Shows
Time Magazine
2026-08-03
Not only are people unable to tell the difference between stories written by humans or artificial intelligence; they actually prefer it when the stories are created by AI. And that's especially true when they are told that the stories had human authors, according to a new study from Villanova University... Dr. Deena Skolnick Weisberg, a senior author of the research from Villanova University in Pennsylvania, said: "AI systems can already generate short stories that are seen as being at least as good as—if not better than—human-written stories. We should update our views of AI's abilities accordingly."
Hollywood Should Give Brain Science a Star Turn
Scientific American
2024-04-18
"Oppenheimer's success at the box office—and the Academy Awards—shows that scientific achievements can sparkle at the cinema... But one key area of science often remains poorly depicted: neuroscience and psychology."
Fantasy Is a Valuable Educational Tool. Just Look at "Barbie"
EducationWeek
2023-10-13
"This summer provided a surprising new source of inspiration for the millions of educators and policymakers now heading back to school: Barbie. In a world in which generative AI will be able to amass information faster than humans and in which essays can be crafted by computers, children must learn to think outside the box—literally, in Barbie's case—not only about what is actual but also about what is possible. By embracing fantasy as an important tool in education, we help all children to create paths from the world as it is to the world as we’d like it to be."
Positive Parenting: Fiction Fights the 30 Million-Word Gap
WFMZ-TV
2019-09-05
Deena Weisberg, PhD, a development psychologist at Villanova University, led a recent study, which included teaching preschool children words in fantasy books or reality-based words in fiction books. Then the kids were tested to see which genre better enriched their word retention.
Imagine That, Fantasy May Help Kids Learn
Scientific American
2016-03-01
"For a long time, psychologists had assumed that role-playing and other imaginative games would be most conducive to learning when the situation was as realistic as possible. New research suggests that a fantastical context may actually improve a child's learning outcomes in some cases, leading to a so-called fantasy advantage."
Research Grants
"Young Children's Beliefs About Causal Systems: Learning About Belief Revision in the Lab and in Museums"
National Science Foundation
September 2017–August 2021
"Reducing Reliance on Plastic and Improving Domestic Water Supply: A Citizen Science Project for San Cristóbal Island"
Galápagos Conservation Trust
June 2018–December 2019
"Standard Research Grant: Community Science and Environmental Conservation"
National Science Foundation
August 2020–July 2023
"Establishing a Global Network for Community Science"
Rita Allen Foundation
January 2021–September 2021
Select Academic Articles
From Hobbits to Harry Potter: A Psychological Perspective on Fantasy
Imagination, Cognition and Personality: Consciousness in Theory, Research and Clinical Practice2025
Human beings are generally captivated by fantasy—a distinct form of fiction—but there has been relatively little research in the behavioral sciences specifically on this subject (as defined in this article). This article integrates research from different areas of psychology and the humanities to provide a theoretical and methodological foundation from which behavioral scientists can conduct systematic empirical investigations of the relationship between fantasy and diverse psychological phenomena.
Should the Cat in the Hat Keep Talking Like That? Educational Correlates of Anthropomorphism in Children's Science Media
Pscyhology of Popular Media2023
Anthropomorphism is ubiquitous in children's media. But past research is mixed on whether this kind of unrealistic depiction benefits or harms children's learning. One possible explanation for these conflicting findings is that different levels of anthropomorphism have different effects.
Dinos and GoPros: Children's Exploratory Behaviors in a Museum and Their Reflections on Their Learning
Frontiers in Psychology2023
Research in both laboratory and museum settings suggests that children's exploration and caregiver-child interaction relate to children's learning and engagement. Most of this work, however, takes a third-person perspective on children's exploration of a single activity or exhibit, and does not consider children's perspectives on their own exploration.
Imaginative Processes in Children Are Not Particularly Imaginative
Behavioral and Brain Sciences2022
The authors argue that children prefer fictions with imaginary worlds. But evidence from the developmental literature challenges this claim. Children's choices of stories and story events show that they often prefer realism. Further, work on the imagination's relation to counterfactual reasoning suggests that an attraction to unrealistic fiction would undermine the imagination's role in helping children understand reality.
