I study how people make efficient and effective choices.

One of my passions is generating novel insights into how people operate effectively and efficiently in a crowded, busy world with so many things to consider & process.

One solution is that people process things relative to their environment, including what’s around them and what they’ve experienced recently, or what we refer to as temporal context. It has become apparent that this happens across many types of decision-making. This helps us both detect changes and reduce redundancy, thereby operating efficiently.

How do recent events influence risky choice behavior?

During my PhD at the University of Denver in The Sokol-Hessner Lab , I sought to extend the idea of temporal context to the domain of risky decision-making by generating insights into how past experiences (such as gains and losses) influence risky monetary choices. Using a combination of approaches (i.e. cognitive theories, affective science, computational methods and neuroimaging), my research has demonstrated that risk-taking is dynamic. You can read about some of my work here and here.

These insights are unanticipated by models of risky decision-making and perplexing because relying on past experiences may at times be disadvantageous (e.g. when monetary outcomes following one choice are unrelated to a subsequent choice, relying on a previous outcome may lead to lower earnings). In ongoing collaboration with the Sokol-Hessner Lab, I am currently leveraging the power of neuroimaging data (fMRI) to deliver insights about how the brain supports efficient decision-making.

How do people decide when their effort is worth it?

I recently joined the Shenhav Lab at Brown University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate where I collaborate with a group of scientists to answer questions about human effort and motivation. I leverage diverse and complex datasets (behavior, self-report measures, fMRI) and advanced statistical analyses (e.g. computational modeling, Bayesian inference, MCMC) to deliver actionable insights about how to motivate people to invest effort. This work is currently ongoing and I look forward to communicating our findings with scientific and general audiences soon!