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.
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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.
[paper]
Petrova, K., & Gross, J.J. (2023).
The future of emotion regulation research: Broadening our field of view.
Affective Science, 4(4), 609–616.
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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. Advance online publication.
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