Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by traditional economic theory.
Robert Beno Cialdini is an American psychologist. He is the Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University and was a visiting professor of marketing, business and psychology at Stanford University.
An implementation intention is a self-regulatory strategy in the form of if-then-plans that can lead to better goal attainment, as well as create useful habits and modify problematic behaviors. It is subordinate to goal intentions as it specifies the when, where and how portions of goal-directed behavior.
Behavioural science is the branch of science concerned with human behaviour. While the term can technically be applied to the study of behaviour amongst all living organisms, it is nearly always used with reference to humans as the primary target of investigation. The behavioural sciences sit in between the conventional natural sciences and social studies in terms of scientific rigor. It encompasses fields such as psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, and economics.
Lisa Feldman Barrett is a Canadian-American psychologist. She is a University Distinguished Professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where she focuses on affective science and co-directs the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory. She has received both of the highest scientific honors in the field of psychology, the William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science for 2025, and the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from the American Psychological Association for 2021. Along with James Russell, she is the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Emotion Review. Along with James Gross, she founded the Society for Affective Science.
Susan Fiona Dorinthea Michie is a British academic, clinical psychologist, and professor of health psychology, director of The Centre for Behaviour Change and head of The Health Psychology Research Group, all at University College London. She is also an advisor to the British Government via the SAGE advisory group on matters concerning behavioural compliance with government regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, she was appointed Chair of the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Technical Advisory Group on Behavioural Insights and Sciences for Health.
Counterproductive norms are group norms that prevent a group, organization, or other collective entities from performing or accomplishing its originally stated function by working oppositely to how they were initially intended. Group norms are typically enforced to facilitate group survival, to make group member behaviour predictable, to help avoid embarrassing interpersonal interactions, or to clarify distinctive aspects of the group’s identity. Counterproductive norms exist despite the fact that they cause opposite outcomes of the intended prosocial functions.
Edward Francis Diener was an American psychologist and author. Diener was a professor of psychology at the University of Utah and the University of Virginia, and Joseph R. Smiley Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois, as well as a senior scientist for the Gallup Organization. He is noted for his three decades of research on happiness, including work on temperament and personality influences on well-being, theories of well-being, income and well-being, cultural influences on well-being, and the measurement of well-being. As shown on Google Scholar as of April 2021, Diener's publications have been cited over 257,000 times.
Nudge theory is a concept in behavioral economics, decision making, behavioral policy, social psychology, consumer behavior, and related behavioral sciences that proposes adaptive designs of the decision environment as ways to influence the behavior and decision-making of groups or individuals. Nudging contrasts with other ways to achieve compliance, such as education, legislation or enforcement.
Adam M. Grant is an American popular science author, and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania specializing in organizational psychology.
Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an author, and a viral marketer. He has published over 50 articles in academic journals, and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. More than a million copies of his books Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior, and The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind are in print in over 35 countries.
Naomi Ellemers is a distinguished professor of social psychology at Utrecht University since September 2015.
Nilanjana Dasgupta is a social psychologist whose work focuses on the effects of social contexts on implicit stereotypes - particularly on factors that insulate women in STEM fields from harmful stereotypes which suggest that females perform poorly in such areas. Dasgupta is a professor of Psychology and is the Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Batja Mesquita is a Dutch social psychologist, a cultural psychologist and an affective scientist. She is a professor of psychology at the University of Leuven, Belgium, where she studies the role of culture in emotions, and of emotions in culture and society. She is director of the Center for Social and Cultural Psychology in Leuven.
Jonathan B. Freeman is an American psychologist and associate professor of psychology at Columbia University. He is best known for his work on the neuroscience of person perception and social cognition, as well as mouse-tracking methodology in cognitive science. His research focuses on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying split-second social judgments and their impact on behaviour.
Iris Mauss is a German-American social psychologist known for her research on emotions and emotion regulation. She holds the position of Professor of Psychology at University of California, Berkeley and Director of the Emotion & Emotion Regulation Lab. Her research has been cited in various publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Psychology Today.
Modupe Nyikoale Akinola is an American organizational scholar and social psychologist who examines the science of stress, creativity, and how to maximize human potential in diverse organizations. She is currently the Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business at Columbia Business School, where she is the Director of the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Center for Leadership and Ethics.
Sherry Jueyu Wu is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizational Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Anderson School of Management. in Westwood, California and the 2020 recipient of the Cialdini Prize from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) for her field research in group dynamics and authority. She conducts large-scale field experiments concerning group influence over long-lasting behavioral changes and decision processes under resource disparity and social inequality.
Food psychology is the psychological study of how people choose the food they eat, along with food and eating behaviors. Food psychology is an applied psychology, using existing psychological methods and findings to understand food choice and eating behaviors. Factors studied by food psychology include food cravings, sensory experiences of food, perceptions of food security and food safety, price, available product information such as nutrition labeling and the purchasing environment. Food psychology also encompasses broader sociocultural factors such as cultural perspectives on food, public awareness of "what constitutes a sustainable diet", and food marketing including "food fraud" where ingredients are intentionally motivated for economic gain as opposed to nutritional value. These factors are considered to interact with each other along with an individual's history of food choices to form new food choices and eating behaviors.
Nickola Christine Overall is a New Zealand academic, and is a professor of psychology at the University of Auckland, specialising in relationship, family and couples psychology. She is especially interested in communication strategies to overcome conflict.
