Posted by Roman Family Center for Decision Research on September 27, 2022
New Faculty Members
Kristin Donnelly is an Assistant Professor of Marketing who studies a range of topics related to how people make everyday decisions. Among other things, her research asks how people think about time, form preferences, and make inferences based on limited information. Donnelly's research has appeared in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Marketing Research, Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been featured in Forbes, The Atlantic, Time, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal and other outlets.
She earned her PhD in Marketing from the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
Erika Kirgios has joined the Chicago Booth Faculty as Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science. Dr. Kirgios studies workplace diversity and inequality, with secondary interests in prosocial behavior and behavior change. She focuses primarily on race and gender in the workplace, drawing on insights from behavioral economics, judgment and decision-making, and organizational behavior to elucidate why inequality persists and to identify theoretically-grounded interventions that can improve outcomes for women and racial minorities.
She earned her PhD from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Stephanie Smith is an Assistant Professor of Marketing who studies the (in)consistencies of the decision-making process across different domains and decision targets (i.e. self vs. other). In her research, she uses eye tracking and computational modeling to better understand the decision process.
Smith earned a PhD in Decision Psychology from The Ohio State University.
Principal Researchers & PhD Students
The Roman Family Center supports a vibrant cohort of postdoctoral principal researchers and PhD students. This year, the center welcomed several new members to our academic research community.
Principal Researchers
Quinn Hirschi studies how people perceive one another in conversations and has discovered several mistaken beliefs people hold about how to make a good first impression. For example, she has found people think they should speak less than 50% of the time to be likable in a conversation with someone new, when in fact, people actually like those who speak up a bit more. Ultimately, Quinn hopes to help improve people’s social lives by understanding and redirecting mistaken beliefs like this.
Emily Powell studies consumer decision making with a particular interest in well-being and charitable giving. One stream of research focuses on identifying how errors in judgment prevent consumers from maximizing well-being. A second stream identifies how contextual features of the decision environment can be used to increase prosocial behavior, including charitable giving and the spread of kindness. Broadly, Emily is interested in understanding how everyday decisions can be used to improve individual and social good.
Rui Sun's research interests include wellbeing, emotion, culture, prosociality, social media, and socioeconomic status. She uses both quantitative methods (big data analysis, questionnaire, online and lab experiments, experience sampling method on smartphones) and qualitative methods (such as theme coding interviews, and content analysis) to research these topics. She is specifically interested in applying computational methods in studying human wellbeing and emotions across different socioeconomic status and cultures.
Yonatan Vanunu's research focuses on how people make decisions under limited capacity. He examines the underlying mechanism of preferential and perceptual decisions when it is presumably difficult to encode and process all given information, and the biases in choice that might arise in response. His theory is based on the common assumption that people are adaptive in nature and therefore are likely to employ a selective mechanism, in which attention is used to prioritize part of the information with respect to the decision maker’s goals and available resources. To test the role of attention in encoding, processing, and choice, he uses statistical and computational models to analyze behavioral measures, such as participants’ choices, response time and eye-movements.
Laura Wallace's research program examines the psychology of social change, developing basic theory with an eye toward informing policy and interventions targeting issues related to diversity, politics, social movements, education, and health. To date, her work has centered on three major questions:
- When and how do people change their minds?
- When will people act in alignment with their beliefs?
- How can organizations communicate to foster inclusion and inspiration?
PhD Students
Samuel Borislow is interested in various topics within moral psychology and marketing. Currently, he is most interested in studying the causes of anti- and prosocial behavior, as well as refining our understanding of the effects of interventions on brand perceptions.
Roman Gallardo is broadly interested in intergroup relations, with a focus on stigmatized groups. More specifically, Roman has three lines of interests: the predictors of prejudice and discrimination, why and how group disparities persist, and the psychological factors underlying intergroup conflict.
Stephanie Hong is broadly interested in studying consumer behavior. Prior to Booth, she studied business and cognitive science at the University of Michigan, interned at P&G in brand management, and was a PRIMO Fellow at Harvard Business School.
Felicia Joy's research interests include motivation, beliefs, workplace culture, and quality of life. One of her primary research objectives is to develop a generalizable measure of quality of life so it can be quantified and compared across communities and contexts. Felicia previously served as an adjunct professor at Syracuse University and currently co-teaches two MBA courses on workplace culture at Chicago Booth.
Tong Su is broadly interested in human-technology relations, communication, social inference, and diversity. Prior to Booth, she worked at HawkPartners, a boutique marketing consultancy, where she assisted clients from Fortune 500 companies in developing branding, consumer experience, and go-to-market strategies.
Jiabi Wang Jiabi is broadly interested in motivation and decision making. Prior to joining the doctoral program, Jiabi received her master’s degree from Yale University and worked as a research assistant at the Center for Decision Research.