A query processing system is described herein for personalizing results for a particular user. The query processing system operates by receiving a query from a particular user u who intends to find results that satisfy the query with respect to a topic Tu, the user being characterized by user information θu. In one implementation, the query processing system then produces a generic topic distribution Prr(T|q) associated with the query that is germane to a population of generic users, as well as a user-specific query-dependent topic distribution Pr(Tu|q,θu) for the particular user. The query processing system then produces personalized results for the particular user based on Prr(T|q) and Pr(Tu|q,θu). The query processing system can use multiple techniques to produce Pr(Tu|q,θu), such as, in one approach, a discriminative learning approach.