Julian De Freitas

Assistant Professor of Business Administration

Julian De Freitas is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing Unit, and Director of the Ethical Intelligence Lab, at Harvard Business School. He is also affiliated with the Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative at Harvard University. He teaches the first year marketing course in the MBA required curriculum, Marketing in the Digital Era in the Executive curriculum, and in the Summer Venture in Management program.

He grew up in South Africa and earned his BA from Yale, his Masters from Oxford, and his PhD from Harvard. He has also held research positions at Stanford and MIT.

Julian is a cognitive scientist who conducts research on ethical intelligence, at the intersection of psychology, ethics, and artificial intelligence. He studies how the ethical intelligence of consumers influences their attitudes toward companies, and how companies can market in ways that are sensitive to these moral buttons in turn. He studies these relationships through specific case studies, such as the ethics of automated machines like autonomous vehicles and companion chatbots, and by studying attitudes toward firms more broadly, as when they morally deteriorate or partake in brand activism. His work helps managers remove barriers to AI adoption, proactively address risk factors arising from the autonomous nature of their products, and determine when and how to become publicly involved in morally relevant matters.

Julian has published over 20 articles in journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, International Conference on Machine Learning, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal.

He has won numerous prizes for his research, teaching, and leadership, including the Rhodes Scholarship, Alpheus Henry Snow Prize (“for the student who has done the most for Yale”), and nine teaching awards, including Harvard College’s Special Commendation (for 10% of teachers in the college).

He has conducted research and written cases on various startups and mature firms, especially in areas of autonomy and consumer ethics, including Perceptive Automata, Motional, Navya, Swiss Re, Koa Health, Replika AI, and Hometown Foods.

Marketing

Unit

Contact Information

(617) 495-4944

Recipient of a Pershing Square Fund for Research Foundations of Human Behavior Grant in 2020.

Recipient of a Hodgson Fund Grant from Harvard University in 2020.

Recipient of an Anderson Fund Grant from Harvard University in 2020.

Honored with a Special Commendation for Extraordinary Teaching by Harvard University in spring of 2020.

Awarded the Goethals Teaching Prize by Harvard University in spring of 2020.

Awarded the Goethals Teaching Prize by Harvard University in fall of 2019.

Recipient of a Sackler Grant from Harvard University in 2019.

Recipient of a Travel Award from the Society of Philosophy & Psychology in 2019.

Received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Bok Center at Harvard University in spring of 2019.

Awarded the Goethals Teaching Prize by Harvard University in spring of 2019.

Awarded the Goethals Teaching Prize by Harvard University in fall of 2018.

Received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Bok Center at Harvard University in spring of 2018.

Received a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from the Bok Center at Harvard University in fall of 2018.

Recipient of a Travel Award from the Society of Philosophy & Psychology in 2018.

Recipient of a Travel Award from the Human Behavior & Evolution Society in 2015.

Recipient of the 2013 Alpheus Henry Snow Award from Yale University.

Winner of the 2013 Albert E. Angier Prize from the Psychology Department at Yale University.

Winner of the 2013 Friends of Music at Yale Prize.

Selected as a Rhodes Scholar in 2012.

He grew up in South Africa and earned his BA from Yale, his Masters from Oxford, and his PhD from Harvard. He has also held research positions at Stanford and MIT.

Featured Work

Ethics of Autonomous Machines

How do we create complex autonomous systems that have ‘ethically acceptable’ behavior, and increase adoption of these products? This work considers the following case studies: (1) autonomous vehicles, the first truly autonomous systems to operate in populated environments, and (2) AI companion chatbots, natural language systems designed for freeform conversation of a friendly or romantic variety. Ethics is relevant to how these technologies should be programmed, marketed, and regulated.

Working Knowledge: Can autonomous vehicles drive with common sense?
Axios: Why the “trolley problem” is the wrong way to think about AVs
Fast Company: Why the trolley dilemma is a terrible model for trying to make self-driving cars safer
Research: Doubting driverless dilemmas
Research: Deliberately prejudiced self-driving vehicles elicit the most outrage
Research: From driverless dilemmas to more practical common-sense tests for automated vehicles
Research: Ethical Risks of Autonomous Products: The Case of Mental Health Crises on AI Companion Applications.

Corporate Identity and Moral Essentialism

Do ethical considerations pervade even the everyday concepts that people use to keep track of and evaluate companies and brands? This work studies how the concepts that people normally use to think about or advise individual people—such as authenticity and meaningfulness—are also used to understand non-human entities like companies and brands. In particular, these studies uncover a default tendency for people to believe that deep inside every individual and organization there is a “good true self” calling them to behave in a morally virtuous manner. We propose that this belief arises from a general cognitive tendency known as moral essentialism.

Research: Moral deteriorations sever firm identity (pdf)
Research: Moral goodness is the essence of personal identity (pdf)
Research: Origins of the belief in morally good true selves (pdf)
Research: Thinking about the true self reduces intergroup bias (pdf)
Research: Consistent belief in a good true self in misanthropes and three interdependent cultures (pdf)

Research: True happiness: The role of morality in the folk concept of happiness (pdf)
Psychology Today: What does it take to be truly happy?

Common Knowledge, Coordination, & Consumer Moral Judgments

In many situations people must solve coordination problems, as when deciding when to use the same products for mutual gain, shirk responsibility, or use a product in public. Although coordination is sometimes effortless, it can fail if people are not on the same page, even when they want the same outcome. Plans clash, misunderstandings proliferate, and shared goals fall through the cracks or are spoiled by too many cooks. How do people solve such formidable challenges? Formal game theory suggests that solving them requires more than just knowing what others are thinking; it requires strategically representing what others think you are thinking, aka recursive mentalizing. Moreover, game theory suggests that the only way to successfully coordinate in certain coordination problems is with common knowledge—in which parties have infinitely recursive knowledge about a fact, e.g., I know that you know that I know that you know... (ad infinitum) that we both plan to meet at Starbucks. This work finds that people behave precisely as these strategic theories predict, across a range of coordination scenarios like market cooperation, evaluations of charitability, and diffusion of responsibility.

Psychology Today: What do people think is the best way to give to charity?
Research: Maimonides' Ladder: States of mutual knowledge and the perception of charitability
Research: Recursive mentalizing and common knowledge in the bystander effect.
Research: Common knowledge, coordination, and strategic mentalizing in human social life

Journal Articles

De Freitas, Julian. "What Is the Optimal Pattern of a Customer Journey?" Harvard Business Review (website) (March 31, 2023). View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Andrea Censi, Bryant Walker Smith, Luigi Di Lillo, Sam E. Anthony, and Emilio Frazzoli. "From Driverless Dilemmas to More Practical Commonsense Tests for Automated Vehicles." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 11 (March 16, 2021). View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and Mina Cikara. "Deliberately Prejudiced Self-driving Vehicles Elicit the Most Outrage." Cognition 208 (March 2021). View Details
Tarhan, Leyla, Julian De Freitas, and Talia Konkle. "Behavioral and Neural Representations en route to Intuitive Action Understanding." Neuropsychologia 163 (December 2021). View Details
Gan, Chuang, Jeremy Schwartz, Seth Alter, Damian Mrowca, Martin Schrimpf, James Traer, Julian De Freitas, Jonas Kubilius, Abhishek Bhandwaldar, Nick Haber, Megumi Sano, Kuno Kim, Elias Wang, Michael Lingelbach, Aidan Curtis, Kevin Feigelis, Daniel M. Bear, Dan Gutfreund, David Cox, Antonio Torralba, James J. DiCarlo, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Josh H. McDermott, and Daniel L.K. Yamins. "ThreeDWorld: A Platform for Interactive Multi-Modal Physical Simulation." Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), Datasets and Benchmarks Track 35th (2021). View Details
Prinzing, Michael, Julian De Freitas, and Barbara L. Fredrickson. "The Ordinary Concept of a Meaningful Life: The Role of Subjective and Objective Factors in Third-Person Attributions of Meaning." Journal of Positive Psychology 17, no. 5 (2022): 639–654. View Details
Kim, Kuno, Megumi Sano, Julian De Freitas, Daniel Yamins, and Nick Haber. "Towards Modeling the Variability of Human Attention." In Bridging AI and Cognitive Science (BAICS) Workshop. 8th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), April 26, 2020. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Sam E. Anthony, Andrea Censi, and George A. Alvarez. "Doubting Driverless Dilemmas." Perspectives on Psychological Science 15, no. 5 (September 2020): 1284–1288. View Details
Kim, Kuno, Megumi Sano, Julian De Freitas, Nick Haber, and Daniel Yamins. "Active World Model Learning with Progress Curiosity." Proceedings of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 37th (2020). View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Kyle A. Thomas, Peter DiScioli, and Steven Pinker. "Common Knowledge, Coordination, and Strategic Mentalizing in Human Social Life." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 28 (July 9, 2019). View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Peter DiScioli, Kyle A. Thomas, and Steven Pinker. "Maimonides' Ladder: States of Mutual Knowledge and the Perception of Charitability." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 148, no. 1 (January 2019): 158–173. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Mina Cikara, Igor Grossman, and Rebecca Schlegal. "Moral Goodness Is the Essence of Personal Identity." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22, no. 9 (September 2018): 739–740. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and George A. Alvarez. "Your Visual System Provides All the Information You Need to Make Moral Judgments about Generic Visual Events." Cognition 178 (September 2018): 133–146. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and Samuel G.B. Johnson. "Optimality Bias in Moral Judgment." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 79 (November 2018): 149–163. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and Mina Cikara. "Deep Down My Enemy Is Good: Thinking about the True Self Reduces Intergroup Bias." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 74 (January 2018): 307–316. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Hagop Sarkissian, George E. Newman, Igor Grossman, Felipe De Brigard, Andres Luco, and Joshua Knobe. "Consistent Belief in a Good True Self in Misanthropes and Three Interdependent Cultures." Cognitive Science 42, no. S1 (2018): 134–160. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Mina Cikara, Igor Grossman, and Rebecca Schlegel. "Origins of the Belief in Good True Selves." Trends in Cognitive Sciences 21, no. 9 (September 2017): 634–636. View Details
Phillips, Jonathan, Julian De Freitas, Christian Mott, June Gruber, and Joshua Knobe. "True Happiness: The Role of Morality in the Concept of Happiness." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 146, no. 2 (2017): 165–181. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Peter DiScioli, Jason Nemirow, Maxim Massenkoff, and Steven Pinker. "Kill or Die: Moral Judgment Alters Linguistic Coding of Causality." Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 43, no. 8 (August 2017): 1173–1182. View Details
DiScioli, Peter, Rachel Karpoff, and Julian De Freitas. "Ownership Dilemmas: The Case of Finders Versus Landowners." Cognitive Science 41, no. S3 (2017): 502–522. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Kevin P. Tobia, George E. Newman, and Joshua Knobe. "Normative Judgments and Individual Essence." Cognitive Science 41, no. S3 (2017): 382–402. View Details
Thomas, Kyle A., Julian De Freitas, Peter DiScioli, and Steven Pinker. "Recursive Mentalizing and Common Knowledge in the Bystander Effect." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 145, no. 5 (2016): 621–629. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Nicholas E. Myers, and Anna C. Nobre. "Tracking the Changing Feature of a Moving Object." Journal of Vision 16, no. 3 (February 2016): 1–21. View Details
Newman, George E., Julian De Freitas, and Joshua Knobe. "Beliefs About the True Self Explain Asymmetries Based on Moral Judgment." Cognitive Science 39, no. 1 (2015): 96–125. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Brandon Liverence, and Brian J. Scholl. "Attentional Rhythm: A Temporal Analogue of Object-Based Attention." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143, no. 1 (February 2014): 71–76. View Details

Business and Opinion Writing

De Freitas, Julian. "Will We Blame Self-Driving Cars? A New Study Finds That People Are Likely to Hold Autonomous Vehicles Liable for Accidents Even When They’re Not at Fault." Wall Street Journal (January 28, 2023), C5. View Details

Working Papers

De Freitas, Julian. "Unselfish Alibis Increase Choices of Selfish Autonomous Vehicles." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-043, February 2023. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Ahmet Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp, Pechthida Kim, and Tomer Ullman. "Summarizing the Mental Customer Journey." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-038, January 2023. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Xilin Zhou, Margherita Atzei, Shoshana Boardman, and Luigi Di Lillo. "Public Perception and Autonomous Vehicle Liability." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-036, January 2023. (Revised January 2023.) View Details
Paul, Laurie, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, Julian De Freitas, and T. Ullman. "Reverse Engineering the Self." Working Paper, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp, Laurie Paul, Joshua B. Tenenbaum, and Tomer Ullman. "What Would It Mean for a Machine to Have a Self?" Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-017, September 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Ahmet Kaan Uğuralp, Zeliha Uğuralp, and Stefano Puntoni. "The Dark Side of Generative AI: Chatbots and Mental Health." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-011, August 2022. (Revised May 2023.) View Details
Nam, Jimin, M. Balakrishnan, Julian De Freitas, and Alison Wood Brooks. "Speedy Activists: Firm Reaction Time to Sociopolitical Events Influences Consumer Behavior." Working Paper, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and Alon Hafri. "Moral Thin-Slicing." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 23-002, July 2022. (Revised December 2022.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Zarema Khon, Pechthida Kim, and Samuel G.B. Johnson. "Moral Deteriorations Sever Firm Identity." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 22-077, June 2022. View Details

Cases and Teaching Materials

De Freitas, Julian, Elie Ofek, Shaun Ingledew, and Tonia Labruyere. "Navya: Steering Toward a Driverless Future." Harvard Business School Case 523-046, September 2022. (Revised December 2022.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and Nicole Tempest Keller. "Replika AI: Monetizing a Chatbot." Harvard Business School Case 523-016, November 2022. (Revised December 2022.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Jeremy Yang, and Das Narayandas. "Hometown Foods." Harvard Business School Multimedia/Video Supplement 522-718, July 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and Jeremy Yang. "Hometown Foods." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 522-104, June 2022. (Revised April 2023.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Jeremy Yang, and Das Narayandas. "Hometown Foods: Changing Price Amid Inflation." Harvard Business School Case 522-087, March 2022. (Revised April 2023.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Jeremy Yang, and Das Narayandas. "Hometown Foods Spreadsheet Supplement for Students." Harvard Business School Spreadsheet Supplement 522-714, March 2022. (Revised April 2023.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Jeremy Yang, and Das Narayandas. "Hometown Foods Spreadsheet Supplement for Instructors." Harvard Business School Spreadsheet Supplement 522-715, March 2022. (Revised April 2023.) View Details

Chaired Conferences and Symposia

De Freitas, J., P. DeScioli, J. Nemirow, M. Massenkof, and S. Pinker. "Mutual Constraints in Moral Cognition and Language." International Conference on Thinking, Providence, RI, 2016. View Details

Submitted Presentations

De Freitas, Julian, A. Ragnhildstveit, and A.K. Uğuralp. "Stigma Against AI Companion Applications." Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, P. Kim, and T. Ullman. "Evaluative Dynamics: Summarizing Customer Journeys, Interviews, and Lives." Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Jimin Nam, M. Balakrishnan, and Alison Wood Brooks. "Timely Statements: Swift Brand Activism Is the Most Effective and Memorable." Paper presented at the Society for Judgment and Decision Making Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, November 10–13, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "Should Automated Vehicles Favor Passengers Over Pedestrians?" Paper presented at the Society for Consumer Psychology Annual Conference, March 2022. (Virtual.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian, Samuel G. B. Johnson, Z. Kohn, and P. Kim. "Corporations are Viewed as Psychopaths with Good True Selves." Paper presented at the Society for Consumer Psychology Annual Conference, March 2022. (Virtual.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "Deliberately Prejudiced Self-driving Vehicles Elicit the Most Outrage." Paper presented at the Society for Judgment and Decision Making Annual Meeting, 2021. (Virtual.) View Details
De Freitas, J., Samuel G. B. Johnson, Z. Kohn, and P. Kim. "Corporations are Viewed as Psychopaths with Good True Selves." Paper presented at the Association for Consumer Research Annual Conference, 2021. View Details
Kim, P., J. De Freitas, and T. Ullman. "Lifelines: Summarizing the Pattern of a Meaningful Life." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, 2021. (Virtual meeting.) View Details
Prinzing, M., J. De Freitas, and B. Frederickson. "The Ordinary Concept of a Meaningful Life." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, 2021. (Virtual meeting.) View Details
De Freitas, J., and M. Cikara. "Deliberately Prejudiced Self-driving Vehicles Elicit the Most Outrage." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, 2021. (Virtual meeting.) View Details
Zhao, X., J. De Freitas, L. Tarhan, and G. A. Alvarez. "A Performance-optimized Limb Detection Model Selectively Predicts Behavioral Responses Based on Movement Similarity." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2020. View Details
Sano, M., J. De Freitas, N. Haber, and D. L. K. Yamins. "Learning in Social Environments with Curious Neural Agents." Paper presented at the 42nd Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference, Toronto, Canada, 2020. (Virtual.) View Details
Kim, K-H, M. Sano, J. De Freitas, N. Haber, and D. L. K. Yamins. "Towards Modeling the Developmental Variability of Human Attention." Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2020. View Details
Kim, K-H, M. Sano, J. De Freitas, N. Haber, and D. L. K. Yamins. "Active World Model Learning with Progress-driven Exploration." Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 2020. View Details
Kim, K-H, M. Sano, J. De Freitas, N. Haber, and D. L. K. Yamins. "Learning World Models with Progress-driven Exploration." Paper presented at the 37th International Conference on Machine Learning, Vienna, Austria, 2020. View Details
Tarhan, L., J. De Freitas, G. A. Alvarez, and T. Konkle. "Semantic Embeddings of Verbal Descriptions Predict Action Similarity Judgments." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2020. View Details
De Freitas, J., J. L. Rips, and G. A. Alvarez. "The Capacity Limit of Personal Identity." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2020. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "Capacity Limits for Higher-level Thought? The Self as a Case Study." Paper presented at the Cognition, Brain, & Behavior Research Seminar, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, September 5, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, J. "Identity and Morality without Mind." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA, United States, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, J., K. H. Kim, N. Haber, C. Conwell, G. A. Alvarez, and D. L. K. Yamins. "Intrinsic Curiosity May Give Rise to Animate Attention." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "Strategic Mentalizing and Common Knowledge in Social Life." Paper presented at the Social Brownbag Talk Series, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2018. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "From Pixels to Moral Judgment: Extracting Morally Relevant Information in Minds and Machines." Paper presented at the Cognition, Brain, & Behavior Research Seminar, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, November 30, 2017. View Details
De Freitas, J., A. Hafri, G. A. Alvarez, and D. L. K. Yamins. "Learning to Recognize Objects Provides Category-orthogonal Features for Social Inference and Moral Judgment." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, Ann Arbor, MI, United States, 2018. View Details
De Freitas, J., A. Hafri, G. A. Alvarez, and D. L. K. Yamins. "From Pixels to Moral Judgment: Extracting Morally Relevant Information in Minds and Machines." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2018. View Details
De Freitas, J., P. DeScioli, K. Thomas, and S. Pinker. "The Ladder of Charity." Paper presented at the 29th Human Behavior and Evolution Society Annual Conference, Boise, ID, United States, 2017. View Details
De Freitas, J., and S. G. B. Johnson. "The Efficiency Principle in Moral Judgment." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, 2017. View Details
De Freitas, J., and G. A. Alvarez. "Changing Moral Judgments by Exploiting the Visual System." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2017. View Details
De Freitas, J., and G. A. Alvarez. "Moral Psychophysics." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, United States, 2016. View Details
De Freitas, J., and G. A. Alvarez. "Moral Psychophysics." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2016. View Details
De Freitas, J., K. A. Thomas, P. DeScioli, and S. Pinker. "The Strategic Bystander: Recursive Theory of Mind and Common Knowledge in Decisions to Help." Paper presented at the 27th Human Behavior and Evolution Society Annual Conference, Columbia, MO, United States, 2015. View Details
De Freitas, J., H. Sarkissian, I. Grossmann, F. De Brigard, A. Luco, and G. E. Newman. "Is There Universal Belief in a Good True Self?" Paper presented at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, Tartu, Estonia, 2015. View Details
De Freitas, J., and S. G. B. Johnson. "Behaviorist Thinking in Judgments of Wrongness, Punishment, and Blame." Paper presented at the 37th Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference, Pasadena, CA, United States, 2015. View Details
De Freitas, J., H. Sarkissian, I. Grossmann, F. De Brigard, A. Luco, G. E. Newman, and J. Knobe. "Is There Universal Belief in a Good True Self?" Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, Durham, NC, United States, 2015. View Details
De Freitas, J., N. E. Nobre, and A. C. Nobre. "Mental Tracking of Dynamic Features." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Pete Beach, FL, 2015. View Details
Phillips, J., C. Mott, Julian De Freitas, J. Gruber, and J. Knobe. "Is That All There Is to Happiness?" Paper presented at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology Annual Meeting, Austin, TX, United States, 2014. View Details
De Freitas, Julian, and K. Knobre. "Feature Extrapolation in Mental Tracking." University of Oxford 2nd Year DPhil Students Poster Event, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, 2014. View Details
De Freitas, J., K. Tobia, J. E. Newman, and J. Knobe. "The Good Ship Theseus: The Effect of Valence on Object Identity Judgments." Paper presented at the 36th Cognitive Science Society Annual Conference, Quebec City, Canada, 2014. View Details
Newman, J. E., J. De Freitas, and J. Knobe. "Beliefs about the True Self Explain Asymmetries Based on Moral Judgment." Paper presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology Annual Meeting, Vancouver, Canada, 2014. View Details
De Freitas, J., B. M. Liverence, and B. J. Scholl. "Visual and Auditory Object-based Attention Driven by Rhythmic Structure over Time." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL, 2013. View Details
De Freitas, J., B. Liverence, and B. J. Scholl. "Attentional Rhythm: A Temporal Analogue of Object-based Attention." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, Naples, FL, 2012. View Details

Keynote Presentations

De Freitas, Julian. "Keynote Speech." In Workshop on Social Intelligence in Humans and Robots. Robotics: Science and Systems Conference, July 2020. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "Workshop on Autonomous Driving" Keynote Speech. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, 2020. (Virtual.) View Details

Invited Presentations

De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Wilfrid Laurier University, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Junior Faculty Research Brown Bag, Harvard Business School, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Center for Humans and Machines, Berlin, Germany, 2022. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." EdukCircle International Convention on Business, Philippines, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Swiss Re Group, Zurich, Switzerland, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Harvard Business School, NERD Lab, Boston, MA, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Stanford University, Causality in Cognition Lab, Palo Alto, CA, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Motional, Inc., Boston, MA, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Hoffman-Yee Research Grant Seminar, Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, Stanford, CA, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, France, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Harvard Business School, Marketing and Communications, Boston, MA, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." University of Bath School of Management, Behavioural Lab Series, United Kingdom, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Computation & Cognitive Development Lab, Cambridge, MA, 2020. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Computational Cognitive Science Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Cambridge, MA, 2020. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." LMC Workshop 'MK40: Common Knowledge, Common Ground, and Context in Communication, University College London, Language and Meaning Centre, London, United Kingdom, 2021. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Stanford University, Causality in Cognition Lab, Palo Alto, CA, 2020. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Deep Neural Networks Reading Group, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Northeastern University, Language and Mind Lab, Boston, MA, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Social Brownbag Talk Series, Brown University, Providence, RI, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." MIT Media Lab, Human Dynamics Group, Cambridge, MA, 2019. (2nd of 2.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Harvard University, Moral Psychology Research Lab, Cambridge, MA, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Visual Attention Lab, Boston, MA, 2019. (Brigham and Women's Hospital.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." MIT Media Lab, Human Dynamics Group, Cambridge, MA, 2019. (1st of 2.) View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Morality Lab at Boston College, Boston, MA, 2019. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Navy Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence (NCARAI) Symposium Series, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, 2018. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Post-Simian Seminar, Nassau, Bahamas, 2018. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Harvard University, Moral Psychology Research Lab, Cambridge, MA, 2018. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Language and Thought Workshop, Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, France, 2017. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Morality Lab at Boston College, Boston, MA, 2016. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Harvard Intergroup Neuroscience Lab, 2016. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Moral Psychology Research Group, Cambridge, MA, 2016. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, France, 2015. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Northeast Music Cognition Group and New York University, New York, NY, 2013. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Yale University Senior Essay Prize Talk, 2013. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." New England Sequencing and Timing Meeting, Amherst, MA, United States, 2013. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Northeast Music Cognition Group and Boston University, Boston, MA, 2012. View Details
De Freitas, Julian. "[Invited Presentation]." Northeast Music Cognition Group and Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2012. View Details

Awards & Honors