HOPE Lab Members

Principal Investigators

Emma Levine

Emma Levine is an Associate Professor of Behavioral Science and Charles E. Merrill faculty scholar at the Booth School of Business. She studies the psychology of altruism, trust, and ethical dilemmas with the goal of understanding how individuals make trade-offs between different values, and how these trade-offs influence decision-making and social perception.

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Erika Kirgios

Erika Kirgios is an incoming Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science at the Booth School of Business. In her research, Erika explores the decision-making biases that underlie inequality and designs interventions to improve outcomes for women and racial minorities and to increase prosocial behavior more broadly. She also studies the strategic choices people make in the face of anticipated discrimination.

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Post-Doctoral Researchers

Laura Wallace

Wallace is a Principal Researcher at Booth Business School. To understand the mechanisms underlying social change, her research program integrates the traditions of attitudes/persuasion, social cognition, social motivation, and intergroup relations. Her work centers on three major questions: 1) When and how do people change their minds?, 2) When will people act in alignment with their beliefs?, 3) How can organizations foster inclusion and inspiration?

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Graduate Students

David Munguia Gomez

David M. Munguia Gomez is a PhD student of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Princeton University. He is broadly interested in the psychology of policy-making, fairness, and causal attribution.

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Nicholas Herzog

Nicholas Herzog is a Marketing PhD student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is interested in judgment and decision making, consumer behavior, and ethics. His research on ethics explores when and why people prefer discretion to strict rule following in the moral domain.

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Elizabeth Huppert

Elizabeth Huppert is a PhD candidate in the joint program in Psychology and Business at the University of Chicago and Booth School of Business. She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and classics from Bowdoin College and two master’s degrees from the University of Chicago (MA in Social Sciences and MA in Psychology). Elizabeth is broadly interested in moral decision making with a particular focus on judgments related to moral hypocrisy, fairness, and honesty.

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Yena Kim

Yena Kim is a PhD Student of Behavioral Science at the Booth School of Business. She graduated with a BA in psychology (honors) from UChicago in 2021. She is also a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Using diverse research methods, both in-lab and out in the field, she studies aspirations to improve oneself across the lifespan and, in particular, whether exercising intellectual humility helps us craft better futures for ourselves and for others.

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Alexander Moore

Alexander K. Moore is a PhD student of Behavioral Science at the University Of Chicago Booth School of Business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Chicago. He is broadly interested in the ways that stated rules and policies impact judgment, decision making, and motivation, as well as the ways that people look for products and information, particularly on the internet.

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Nicholas Owsley

Nicholas Owsley is a Behavioral Science PhD student at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is broadly interested in judgment and decision making and social cognition, with specific interest in prosocial decision-making, discrimination, and the application of moral frameworks to decisions.

Annabelle Roberts

Annabelle studies judgment and decision making in the context of consumer behavior, with a focus on motivation and self-control. In her research, she explores what leads people to make more patient decisions and feel more patient while waiting. She also studies the consequences of self-disclosure, and aims to provide insight on how people can share sensitive information with others in a way that increases trust and reduces negative judgments.

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Lab Managers

Solomon Lister

Solomon Lister is a HOPE Lab manager, and holds a B.A. in Psychology & Minor in Philosophy from the University of Chicago. Solomon is broadly interested in judgment and decision making, cognitive biases and heuristics, and morality in the context of social cognition, with a specific focus on lying and deception. He also serves as lab manager for Dr. Jane Risen and assistant lab manager at Chicago Booth’s Center for Decision Research.

Jordyn Schor

Jordyn Schor is a HOPE lab manager and holds a B.A. in Psychology and Minor in Statistics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is interested in moral judgment, prosocial behavior, and behavioral economics. She also works as a Research Professional for Dr. Dan Bartels and Dr. Shereen Chaudhry.

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Affiliates

Sarah Jensen

Sarah Jensen is a PhD student in Management at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah. She was formerly a lab manager in the Center for Decision Research and holds an MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago as well as a BA in Psychology and French from St. Norbert College. Sarah is broadly interested in moral judgments, prosocial behavior, and decision-making.

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Samantha Kassirer

Samantha Kassirer is a Doctoral Candidate in Management & Organizations at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Samantha studies morality, ethics, and charitable behavior. Specifically, her work explores the psychological process of moralization, (effective) charitable giving, and recipients’ reactions to help.

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Stacia King

Stacia is a former HOPE lab RA, and a current Ph.D. student in Stanford University’s social psychology department. She is a proud alumna of Howard University, where she earned Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Mathematics. Her current research interests include conflict resolution in parties with unequal power dynamics, punishment and misconceptions we have about it, and transformative alternatives.

Justin Landy

Justin F. Landy is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Nova Southeastern University. His research is at the intersection of social and cognitive psychology, and primarily concerns the nature of moral judgment, especially as it relates to reasoning, emotion, and social cognition. His work has been published in journals including Perspectives on Psychological Science, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Psychological Bulletin, and his paper “Does incidental disgust amplify moral judgment? A meta-analytic review of experimental evidence” received an award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology for outstanding research conducted by a graduate student. When he is not working, he enjoys cooking, trivia games, and cheering for the Baltimore Ravens.

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Michael White

Mike White is a former HOPE Lab manager and current Organizational Behavior PhD student at Columbia Business School. He is interested in prosocial behavior, and his research seeks to understand what prompts acts of good and bad towards those we believe are similar or different from ourselves. He also uses insights from psychophysiology and biology to understand how these experiences get under the skin and impact health.

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Research Assistants

Emily Cheng

Emily Cheng is an undergraduate student at the University of Chicago. She is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in English Literature and Language. Her research interests include the social consequences of ethical dilemmas, as well as decision-making and prosocial behavior.

Emma Friedman

Emma is excited to join the HOPE Lab team! After receiving her BA from Northwestern University, Emma obtained a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin. She then matriculated at a PhD program at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to her involvement with the lab, Emma is a student in University of Chicago’s Medical Writing and Editing Program and also works at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. She comes from a diverse research background including molecular pharmacology, cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.

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