Biography

Reid Hastie studies judgment and decision making (managerial, legal, medical, engineering, and personal), memory and cognition, and social psychology. He is best known for his research on legal decision making and he is currently studying the role of causal reasoning in judgments of all kinds and the wisdom of crowds in collective decisions.

Hastie has written a textbook, Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making, in collaboration with Robyn Dawes of Carnegie Mellon University, and a popular book on collective intelligence, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter, with Cass Sunstein. He is involved with the Center for Decision Research at Chicago Booth.

He taught previously at Harvard University, Northwestern University, and the University of Colorado where he was director of the Center for Research and Judgment Policy.

Hastie has served on review panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Research Council, and on 18 professional journal editorial boards. His research was funded continuously by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health from 1975 to 2005. He has published more than 100 articles in scientific journals, including Psychological Review, Psychological Bulletin, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Developmental Psychology, and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Hastie earned a bachelor's degree in Psychology from Stanford University in 1968, a master's degree in Psychology from the University of California at San Diego in 1970, and a doctoral degree in Psychology from Yale University in 1973. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 2001.

Research Interests

Judgment and decision making (managerial, legal, medical, engineering, and personal), the neural substrates of decision processes, memory and cognition, and social psychology. Some currently active research topics include: the impact of rumors and "news" on stock market forecasts; the role of explanations in category concept representations (including the effects on category classification, deductive and inductive inferences); civil jury decision making; neural and physiological substrates of risky decision making; and the psychology of reading statistical graphs and maps.

Academic Areas

  • Behavioral Science

Selected Publications

Working Papers

2024 - 2025 Course Schedule

Number Course Title Quarter
38913 Foundations of Judgment and Decision Making 2024 (Autumn)
38002 Managerial Decision Making 2024 (Autumn)
38002 Managerial Decision Making 2025 (Spring)

Get Insights from Reid Hastie in Chicago Booth Review

Hal Weitzman, Reid Hastie, Kristen Castillo, Pedro de Andrade Faria, Chris Baker

How Should You Manage a Global Team?

Chicago Booth’s Reid Hastie, Kristen Castillo of AbbVie, Pedro de Andrade Faria of Tarpon Investimentos, and Parexel's Chris Baker discuss the challenges of leading employees across international boundaries.

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Glasses bringing words into focus

Polarization: One Reason Groups Fail

Since the beginning of human history, people have made decisions in groups. In modern societies, they do so in companies, law firms, school boards, labor unions, religious organizations, governments, and international institutions.

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