Postdoctoral Fellow · Incoming Assistant Professor

Dan‑Mircea Mirea

I am a MindCORE Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. I recently completed my PhD in Psychology at Princeton University, where I split my time between the Niv Lab and the Logic of Emotion Lab. Before that, I studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge.

I study the psychology of mental health in the digital age. My work has two facets: (1) understanding the psychological processes underlying mental health and psychotherapy with the aim of improving treatment outcomes, and (2) understanding the impact of digital technologies on mental health and designing better digital experiences. I use a variety of methods, including controlled and field experiments, large-scale digital behavior, cognitive modeling, and large language models.

I'm super excited to join the University of Miami as an Assistant Professor of Psychology in summer 2027. I am planning to recruit a PhD student this cycle through either the Clinical Psychology or the Psychological Sciences program. Please reach out if you're interested in working with me as a grad student, lab manager, or postdoc!

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Portrait of Dan-Mircea Mirea

News

  1. Started as a MindCORE Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

  2. Successfully defended my PhD in Psychology at Princeton, surrounded by colleagues, friends, and family. See the post.

  3. Our new paper in JAMA Psychiatry, "The reinforcement effect of social media likes in depression," is out, along with an accompanying editorial. For a less technical summary, check out my interview on the JAMA Psychiatry podcast.

  4. Attended the Young Futures Block Party, where I received a Research & Academia Award for my research on digital mental health. Read more.

  5. Super grateful to receive a Charlotte Elizabeth Procter Honorific Fellowship from Princeton, distinguishing my dissertation work and supporting my final year of study. Read more.

  6. Gave a flash talk at the Psychology of Technology Conference, which you can watch here.

  7. New review in Trends in Cognitive Sciences: "Cognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental health."

  8. RLDM 2025 was so fun! The highlight was co-organizing a workshop on Reinforcement Learning in the Wild. I also got to hang out in the Gillan Lab and the Cambridge Digital Mental Health Group before and after.

  9. Honored to receive a Psychology of Technology Dissertation Award from the Psychology of Technology Institute. Read more.

  10. Thankful to the Society for Affective Science for the Diversity Award.

  11. Thrilled to receive an Exemplar Mentor Award from the Princeton McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning.

Publications

Journal Articles

  • 2026

    The reinforcement effect of social media likes in depression

    Mirea, D.-M., Chen, S., Palacio-Soto, K., Ding, J., Mildner, J.N., Kelley, S.W., Gillan, C.M., Nook, E.C.*, Niv, Y.*

    JAMA Psychiatry, 83(9), 930–938DOI →
  • 2026

    Stage 1 Registered Report: Testing the longitudinal and causal effect of social media rewards on mood and mental health in young adults

    Mirea, D.-M., Holton, E., Chandrasekhar, D., Niv, Y.

    Lifecycle Journal, 2Instagram Data Access PilotDOI →
  • 2026

    A reporting checklist for large language models in behavioural science

    Barrie, C., Crockett, M.J., Globig, L., McLoughlin, K., Mirea, D.-M., et al.

    Nature Human Behaviour, 10, 1182–1186DOI →
  • 2025

    Cognitive modeling of real-world behavior for understanding mental health

    Mirea, D.-M., Nook, E.C., Niv, Y.

    Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 30, 350–363DOI →
  • 2025

    Big team science reveals promises and limitations of machine learning efforts to model the physiological basis of affective experience

    Coles, N.A., Perz, B., Behnke, M., Eichstaedt, J.C., …, Berwian, I.M., Chiu, J.C., Mirea, D.-M., Nook, E.C., Vartiainen, H.I., Whiting, C., et al.

    Royal Society Open Science, 12, 241778DOI →
  • 2025

    Emotions Shape Effort-Reward Choices: Positive Valence Decreases Effort, Except Under High Arousal

    Chiu, J.C., Budny, N., Sameer, A., Baah, P.A., Mirea, D.-M., Berwian, I.M., Niv, Y.

    Proceedings of ETRA 2025DOI →
  • 2024

    GPT is an effective tool for multilingual psychological text analysis

    Mirea, D.-M.*, Rathje, S.*, Sucholutsky, I., Marjieh, R., Robertson, C., Van Bavel, J.J.

    PNAS, 121(34), e2308950121DOI →
  • 2024

    The ubiquity of time in latent-cause inference

    Mirea, D.-M.*, Shin, Y.S.*, Dubrow, S., Niv, Y.

    Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 36(11), 2442–2454Article →
  • 2021

    The impact of an online psychiatric assessment on the mental health and wellbeing of participants presenting with depressive symptoms: longitudinal observational study

    Mirea, D.-M., Martin-Key, N.A., Barton-Owen, G., Olmert, T., et al.

    JMIR Mental Health, 8(2), e23813Article →
  • 2021

    Towards an extended definition of major depressive disorder symptomatology: digital assessment and cross-validation study

    Martin-Key, N.A., Mirea, D.-M., Olmert, T., Cooper, J.D., et al.

    JMIR Formative Research, 5(10), e27908Article →
  • 2021

    A machine learning algorithm to differentiate bipolar disorder from major depressive disorder using an online mental health questionnaire and blood biomarker data

    Tomasik, J., Han, S.Y.S., Barton-Owen, G., Mirea, D.-M., Martin-Key, N.A., et al.

    Translational Psychiatry, 11(1), 1–12Article →
  • 2019

    Comprehensive identification of RNA-protein interactions in any organism using orthogonal organic phase separation (OOPS)

    Queiroz, R.M.L.*, Smith, T.*, Villanueva, E.*, Marti-Solano, M., Monti, M., Pizzinga, M., Mirea, D.-M., et al.

    Nature Biotechnology, 37(2), 169–178Article →

Preprints & Under Review

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    Semantic similarity between clients and their therapists predicts alliance and treatment outcomes in large-scale digital psychotherapy

    Mirea, D.-M., Hull, D.T., Nook, E.C.

    SubmittedPreprint →
  • —

    The IOL-AI Challenge: An Open Challenge towards Advancing Linguistic Reasoning

    Sánchez, E.*, Berrada, R.*, Mirea, D.M.*, Rajaee, S., Piperski, A., Dolinar, A.M., et al., Kreutzer, J.

    SubmittedarXiv →
  • —

    Anxiety modulates event segmentation

    Bein, O., Wolf, N., Khalifeh, C., Beugelsdyk, L., Mirea, D.-M., Karni, G., Niv, Y.

    SubmittedPreprint →
  • —

    A collective review on some potential negative impacts of smartphone and social media use on adolescent mental health: Results from a Delphi process

    Capraro, V., Globig, L., Rausch, Z., Rathje, S., …, Mirea, D.-M., et al.

    SubmittedPreprint →
  • —

    Increasing Trust in Science via Accessible Communication: A Social Ecological Approach

    Brown, R.L., Siegel, J.A., Mirea, D.-M., Rathje, S.

    Submitted

* denotes equal contribution.