I’m a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology at Stanford University, where I work with James Gross and Tobias Gerstenberg. I am a computational affective scientist. In my work, I combine computational modeling, behavioral experiments, psychophysiology, and qualitative methods to understand how affective states such as emotions, motivations, and values energize and direct intelligent behavior. Before Stanford, I studied Psychology and Neuroscience at Bryn Mawr College and worked on the Harvard Study of Adult Development.
Selected publications
Petrova, K., Madibekov, N., Gerstenberg, T., & Gross, J. J. (2026).
What You See Is What You Regret.
Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society.
[paper]
Petrova, K., Gross, J. J., & Gerstenberg, T. (2025).
Learning From “What Might Have Been”: A Bayesian Model of Learning From Regret.
Proceedings of the 47th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 5845–5851.
[paper]
Petrova, K., & Gross, J. J. (2023).
The Future of Emotion Regulation Research: Broadening Our Field of View.
Affective Science, 4(4), 609–616.
[paper]
Petter, J., Mehta, A., Petrova, K., Kindt, M., Sheppes, G., Haslbeck, J. M. B., & Gross, J. J. (2025).
Emotion Regulation, Fast or Slow: A Computational Model of Strategy Choice.
Emotion, 25(5), 1273–1292.
[paper]