Celeste Kidd | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | University of Rochester University of Southern California |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of California, Berkeley MIT Stanford University |
| Thesis | Rational Approaches to Learning and Development |
| Doctoral advisor | Richard N. Aslin |
| Website | www |
Celeste Kidd is a professor of psychology at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. She was amongst the "Silence Breakers" who were namedTime Person of the Year in 2017.
Kidd studiedprint journalism andlinguistics at theUniversity of Southern California, where she earned a dual honors degree in 2007.[1] Kidd moved to theUniversity of Rochester for her graduate studies, where she worked in brain andcognitive studies and earned her PhD in 2013. She worked withRichard N. Aslin, an expert on infant learning.[2] Kidd held visiting positions atStanford University and theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.[3]
Kidd works on curiosity and exploration throughout early development. She was hired as assistant professor at theUniversity of Rochester in 2012.[2] She has studied the willpower of children, challenging theStanford marshmallow experiment.[4][5] She demonstrated that children's willpower is influenced by their superior's reliability andtrust.[6][7]
Kidd was made director of the Rochester Baby Lab at the University of Rochester in 2014.[3][8]
In 2017, Kidd was one of several whistleblowers who sued the University of Rochester for its handling of sexual harassment complaints.[9][10] Kidd and another whistleblowerJessica F. Cantlon were named as two of Time's Person of the Year 2017 for their complaints.[11] Ultimately, in 2020, Kidd and the other plaintiffs settled with the University or Rochester for $9.4 million.[12]
She resigned from University of Rochester and moved to theUniversity of California, Berkeley in June 2018.[8] She has studied why it is so difficult to shake a false belief, such as believing inflat earth orclimate change denial.[13] Kidd is interested in the neuroscience ofcuriosity.[14][15] She demonstrated that uncertainty can lead to the most curiosity.[15]
Kidd has been selected as one of theAssociation for Psychological Science's Rising Stars.[18]
