Social psychologist with expertise in judgment and decision making, behavioral economics, risk management, and culture and cognition. In my current work, I bring together insights from social, behavioral, and cognitive science to evaluate, predict, and improve people’s everyday judgment, decision making, and behavior, especially involving health and financial risk management, and to inform the efficacy and sustainability of government programs and policies associated with those decisions. In culture and cognition, I build on interdisciplinary research on analytic (e.g., European) vs. holistic (e.g., Asian) cognitive styles to put together a better understanding of the cognitive styles of Arab and Middle Eastern cultures and situate it within established cognitive frameworks (e.g., dialectical thinking vs. formal logic), thereby expanding our ability to predict and influence human judgment and decision making across contexts, cultures, and domains, and to anticipate the prospect for social and cultural change.
