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Assistant Professor
Cognitive Psychology Unit
Leiden University, The Netherlands
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Dr. Iliana Samara is an Assistant Professor at the Cognitive Psychology Unit, Leiden University. Her research asks how people infer attraction, intention, and consent under uncertainty, combining behavioural experiments with signal detection theory and multilevel modelling. She also leads citizen-science work with adolescents and comments regularly on relationship science in the national media.
Dr. Iliana Samara is an Assistant Professor at the Cognitive Psychology Unit, Institute of Psychology, Leiden University. Her work treats attraction and social perception as problems of inference under uncertainty: people rarely observe interest, intention, or consent directly, so they must infer it from noisy cues. Across speed-dating paradigms, cognitive tasks, and comparative studies, she investigates sexual overperception, consent clarity, mimicry and coordination, and pair-bond formation, using signal detection theory and Bayesian multilevel models. She develops open, reproducible tools, including an interactive signal detection theory app, and leads an NWO-funded citizen-science project that involves adolescents in research on attraction and relationships. Alongside her research she teaches cognitive neuroscience and consciousness, and speaks regularly with national television, radio, and press.