Academic Areas Behavioral Science Faculty and Research

Behavioral Science Faculty in the News

8 Ways to Vastly Improve Your Communication Skills
September 23, 2020 | World Economic Forum
A study coauthored by Booth’s Nicholas Epley finds that people who know each other well don’t understand one another any better than people who just met. “Our problem in communicating with friends is that we have an illusion of insight,” Epley said.

Q&A: How to Better Cope with the Mental Burden of a Pandemic
July 23, 2020 | Medical Xpress
Booth professor and social psychologist Ayelet Fishbach says policymakers have a responsibility to help guide the public through feelings of uncertainty brought on by the pandemic.

The Law of Supply and Demand Isn’t Fair
May 20, 2020 | The New York Times
It isn’t socially acceptable to raise prices of essential items during an emergency, but Booth’s Richard H. Thaler says this social norm predictably leads to shortages like those seen during the early weeks of the coronavirus crisis in the United States.

Partnering across the University of Chicago and Beyond

Our behavioral science faculty members are active in and outside of the University of Chicago.

Booth’s Anuj Shah works with UChicago’s Crime Lab on issues such as improving criminal justice outcomes. The behavioral science faculty collaborates with the university’s Department of Psychology, providing Booth’s PhD students with the option to earn a Joint PhD in Psychology and Business. And Booth’s Sendhil Mullainathan helped cofound a nonprofit to apply behavioral science called ideas42, which leverages behavioral science to help improve lives, create social change, and build stronger systems and policies.

Research Spotlight

Discover some of the latest working papers and published papers from our behavioral science faculty.

“Trade-Offs in Choice”
Ayelet Fishbach, with coauthors Franklin Shaddy (Anderson School of Management, University of California at Los Angeles) and Itamar Simonson (Graduate School of Business, Stanford University)

“Dyadic Judgments Based on Conflicting Samples: The Failure to Ignore Invalid Input”
Alex Koch, with coauthors Klaus Fiedler (Department of Psychology, University of Heidelberg), Tobias Krüger (Department of Psychology, Neu‐Ulm University of Applied Sciences, Hochschule Neu‐Ulm), and Florian Kutzner (Department of Psychology, University of Heidelberg)

“Arousal Increases Self-Disclosure”
Ann L. McGill, with coauthor Brent Coker (University of Melbourne)

Research Centers in This Area

Research centers across Booth and the University of Chicago are hubs for innovation and world-changing research. The centers provide our faculty with research support, and our faculty members lend their expertise to the centers, enriching the student experience and the broader academic community at Booth.