Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Lebenswissen­schaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Psychologie

Education and Academic Positions 

since 2024
Co-leading with Rasha Abdel Rahman DFG project "The Neurocognition of social-emotional (mis)information"

since 2022 
Post-Doc at Rasha Abdel Rahman Lab in Neurocognitive Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

2022 Dr. rer. nat. "Emotional content in social misinformation affects mind, brain, and judgments"

2017-2022
Doctoral researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain

Doctoral scholarship by Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes     

2021-2022

Researcher at Science of Intelligence (with TU Berlin) in the project "Knowledge-augmented face perception"   

2020
Research visit at Cognitive Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Brown University, US

2016                   
Scholarship by Humboldt-Research Track for Promotion of Young Researchers in the Excellence Initiative

Master of Science in Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

2012
Study abroad in Psychology and Neuroscience at University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia

Publications and Pre-prints

Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R. (2025). A beautiful face is good when we’re judged by others, a moral character is better. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 20(1), nsae071. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsae071

Eiserbeck, A., Maier, M., Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R. (2023). Deepfake smiles matter less—The psychological and neural impact of presumed AI-generated faces. Scientific Reports, 13(1), Article 1. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42802-x

Baum, J., Froemer, R. & Abdel Rahman, R. (2022). Fake news and metacognition: Emotional contents enhance confidence in social judgments based on untrustworthy headlines. Top Ranked Abstracts from the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society for Affective Science. Affective Science, 3(1), 273–289. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-021-00071-9

Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R. (2021). Negative news dominates fast and slow brain responses and social judgments even after source credibility evaluation. NeuroImage, 244(August), 118572. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2021.118572

Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R. (2020). Emotional news affects social judgments independent of source credibility. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. http://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsaa164

Baum, J., Rabovsky, M., Rose, S. B., & Abdel Rahman, R. (2018). Clear judgments based on unclear evidence: Person evaluation is strongly influenced by untrustworthy gossip. Emotion. 20(2), 248–260. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000545

Media Coverage and Science Communication

2024:

• SPSP Blog: "Why emotional news can fool us despite their low credibility"

2023:

• Pressemitteilung HU Berlin "Computergenerierte Gesichter berühren weniger als Bilder von realen Gesichtern"

2022:

• DUZ Magazin für Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft „Nachgefragt: Warum wirken negative Schlagzeilen wider besseren Wissens?“

2021:

• Pressemitteilung HU Berlin "Negative Schlagzeilen wirken auch dann, wenn wir es eigentlich besser wissen"
• PsyPost Blog: "Neurocognitive study finds emotional news impacts social judgments regardless of perceived media credibility"

2020:

• Invited talk and panel discussion at The Communications Coordination Committee for the United Nations (CCCUN) on "Countering Misinformation and Fake News in Many Spheres"
• Pressemitteilung HU Berlin "Emotionale Schlagzeilen wirken unabhängig von der Glaubwürdigkeit der Quelle"
• Press release HU Berlin "Emotional headlines have an impact regardless of the credibility of the source"

2019:

• Press release HU Berlin "Emotions persist"
• Pressemitteilung HU Berlin "Die Emotionen bleiben"
• Deutschlandfunk "Psychologisches Experiment: Üble Nachrede bleibt im Gehirn"
• PsyPost Blog: "Study: People are strongly influenced by gossip even when it is explicitly untrustworthy"

2016, 2017, 2018: Talk and research demonstration at 'Long night of sciences', HU Berlin

Conferences and Invited Talks

2025

Invited talk "The neurocognition of social-emotional (mis)information" at the Summer School "Bullshit, Lies, and Disinformation" organised by Verena Wagner, HU Berlin and The Berlin School of Mind and Brain

2024

Invited talk at Campus Werkstatt, MPI Berlin
"Evaluations of presumed deepfakes with different emotional expressions" (Baum, Eiserbeck, Maier, & Abdel Rahman) 

Poster "The evaluation of presumed deepfakes with different basic emotional expressions
depends on valence" (Baum, Eiserbeck, Maier, & Abdel Rahman) at PuG Psychology and Brain, Hamburg

2023

Invited Conference Talk to the Symposium "Mechanisms of processing faces and facial expressions", PuG Psychology and Brain, Tübingen
Title “Deep fake smiles matter less–Believing a face to be fake affects face perception and emotional processing” (Baum, Eiserbeck, Maier, & Abdel Rahman)

2022 

Invited Talks "The neurocognition of emotional misinformation" (Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R.)

• Center für Adaptive Rationalität, Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin, Prof. Ralph Hertwig
• Political Science meets Psychology Meeting, organisiert von Prof. Reinhold Kliegl, Universität Potsdam 

Conference Talks "Emotion—not credibility—determines the cognitive effort invested in processing social misinformation" (Baum, Frömer, & Abdel Rahman)

• ESCAN European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences, Wien, Österreich
• TEAP, Köln

2021

Conference Talks "Beautiful is good, moral is better: Social judgments based on facial attractiveness and affective information" (Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R.):

• PuG Psychology and Brain, Tübingen, Germany in our symposium "Faces in Context: Bottom-up and top-down influences on face perception" with Kirsten Stark and Rasha Abdel Rahman
• ESCAN European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences, Budapest, Hungary

Conference Talk "Negative news contents dominate brain responses and social judgments even after source credibility evaluation" (Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R.):

• ESCAN European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences, Budapest, Hungary

Conference Talk "Fake news and metacognition: Emotional contents enhance confidence in social judgments based on untrustworthy headlines" (Baum, J., Frömer, R., & Abdel Rahman, R.)

• SAS, Society for Affective Science, US 

2020

Conference Talk "Negativity prevails in social judgments: The neural consequences of exposure to negative and positive headlines from explicitly distrusted media sources" (Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R.) 

• S4SN 2020*, Society for Social Neuroscience, US

Symposium "Faces in Context" (accepted at PuG Conference): Talk "Beautiful is good, moral is better: Social judgments based on facial attractiveness and affective information" (Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R.)

Invited Talk at FeldmanHall Lab, Social & Affective Neuroscience, Brown University, US

2019

Invited Talks:

• Affective Neuroscience and Psychophysiology Lab, Georg-August University Göttingen, Germany
• Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, University Potsdam, Germany

Conference Talks "Media source credibility and the impact of affective person-related information" (Baum, J., & Abdel Rahman, R.):

• TeaP Conference of Experimental Psychologists, London, UK
• PuG Psychology and Brain, Dresden, Germany
   

2018

Conference Talks "Clear judgments based on unclear evidence: Person evaluation is strongly influenced by untrustworthy gossip" (Baum, J., Rabovsky, M., Rose, S. B., & Abdel Rahman, R.):

• TeaP Conference of Experimental Psychologists, Marburg, Germany
• ESCAN European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neurosciences, Leiden, Netherlands
• DGPs Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychologie, Frankfurt, Germany
   

2016 

Conference Poster "Person judgement is unaffected by the uncertainty of gossip and rumours" (Baum, J., Rabovsky, M., Rose, S. B., & Abdel Rahman, R.)

• PuG Psychology and Brain, Berlin, Germany
   

2015 

Conference Talk "Emotional responses are unaffected by the uncertainty of rumour and gossip" (Baum, J., Rabovsky, M., Rose, S. B., & Abdel Rahman, R.)

• TeaP Conference of Experimental Psychologists, Hildesheim, Germany

Summer and Winter Schools:

• 2025: Summer School: Bullshit, Lies, and Disinformation, Berlin
• 2018: Aegina Summer School: New Perspectives and Methods on Social Cognition, Aegina, Greece
• 2018: 2nd Bayes Symposium: Introducing Basic and Advanced Bayesian Modelling, Magdeburg, Germany
• 2018: Summer School on Statistical Methods for Linguistics and Psychology, Potsdam, Germany
• 2018: Winter School Ethics and Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany
   

Fellowships and Awards

2020-2021: Fellowship by Caroline von Humboldt Program of HU Berlin 

since 2017: Doctoral candidate of the International Graduate School Berlin School of Mind and Brain

2017-2020: Dissertation Fellowship by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

2017: Dissertation Fellowship by Elsa-Neumann-Foundation, state of Berlin 

2016-2017: Dissertation Preparation Fellowship by Humboldt-Research Track, Humboldt Graduate School, HU Berlin

2017: Award for best M.Sc. degree of the year 2016, Department of Psychology, HU Berlin

2009-2016: Student Fellowship by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

2012: Study-abroad Fellowship by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) and exchange program by HU Berlin International

Department Service and Voluntary Work

since 2020 Commission member for admissions to Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

2020 Equal Opportunities Commission member, Institute of Psychology, HU Berlin

2017-2020 Doctoral student representative at the Graduate Center Life Sciences, HU Berlin
 

Mentoring

Mentor for first-generation students at Firstgen HU Berlin

Mentor for first-generation students in Neukölln Berlin (Bürgerstiftung Neukölln)