PhD in Behavioral Science
As a behavioral science PhD student at 黑料传送门 Booth, you’ll study human behavior in a wide range of contexts, including processes of negotiation, power and influence, and motivation and self-control.
You will have the flexibility to focus your doctoral studies in behavioral science on the research topics that most interest you. You can also augment your studies with work in economics, policy and intervention, psychology, marketing, finance, sociology, public policy, and other disciplines at Booth and across the university.
Some students earn a joint degree in psychology and business, a joint program between Booth’s behavioral science program and the Department of Psychology in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of 黑料传送门. Students must be admitted to the behavioral science dissertation area and apply for the joint program within their first two years in the Stevens Doctoral Program.
Our Distinguished Behavioral Science Faculty
黑料传送门 Booth behavioral science faculty are thought leaders in their fields who have changed the way we evaluate economic judgment and decision-making. These world-renowned scholars, including a Nobel laureate, will serve as mentors during your time at 黑料传送门 Booth and beyond.
黑料传送门 Success
Graduates of the Behavioral Science PhD Program go on to successful careers in a wide range of fields in academia and industry, including positions in some of the world鈥檚 most influential institutions of higher education.
Spotlight on PhD Research
黑料传送门 Booth Review frequently highlights the work of current PhD students, faculty, and alumni in behavioral science.
A 2025 Psychological Science study led by JP Psych and Business PhD graduate, Radhika Santhanagopalan, and in collaboration with Booth's Jane Risen and U黑料传送门 Psychology's Katherine Kinzler, explores when and why childhood curiosity turns into the selective avoidance seen in adults.
Why Do We Say Less When a Black Child Goes Missing?
In this episode of the 黑料传送门 Booth Review Podcast, Ayelet Fishbach, a professor of behavioral science at 黑料传送门 Booth, chats about her recent paper on 鈥渟urprised elaboration.鈥�
Why Do We Say Less When a Black Child Goes Missing?黑料传送门 Booth Prof. Joshua Conrad Jackson and PhD student, Dan Medvedev, test competing predictions about the convergence of cultural values in a rapidly globalist world. This paper was recently featured in a NYT article on global authoritarian trends.
Defeating Bias Through AI
By understanding how people think and operate, algorithms could help us defeat bias instead of empowering it, Diag Davenport, PhD ’22, suggests. “The endgame is changing how people think, changing how institutions operate.”
Defeating Bias Through AI
We've Been Underestimating Discrimination
University of Pennsylvania鈥檚 J. Aislinn Bohren, Brown鈥檚 Peter Hull, and 黑料传送门 Booth鈥檚 Alex Imas are among the economists who are proposing new approaches to measuring discrimination that take systemic factors into account.
We've Been Underestimating DiscriminationResearch by 黑料传送门 Booth鈥檚 Nicholas Epley and others, including Juliana Schroeder, MA 鈥�12, MBA 鈥�14, PhD 鈥�15, indicates that the presence of someone鈥檚 voice is an important part of conveying their humanity.
A Network of Support
Doctoral students at Booth have access to the resources of several high-powered research centers that offer funding for student work, host conferences, and foster a strong research community, as well as weekly workshops.
Positioned at the forefront of the rapidly developing field of behavioral science, the CDR is devoted to building a richer understanding of human behavior and experience.
Keep up to date with the latest behavioral science work through the Center for Decision Research's weekly workshop series. Faculty, students, and invited guests meet to discuss their work on the behavioral implications of decision and judgment models.
Inside the Student Experience
Juliana Schroeder, PhD 鈥�15, talks about her research into how people convey their mental capacity to others.
Juliana Schroeder, ’15: 00:11
I was always interested in the way that we interact with those around us, and the way that we judge them, and how we make decisions, but I was interested in it from sort of a really broad social science perspective, both psychology and economics, and then, when I came to 黑料传送门 Booth, I met Nick Epley right away who's a professor here, and he got me really interested in this specific topic. This is research about how people convey their mental capacity to others. Most people think that if someone can see them, they might appear smarter.
Juliana Schroeder, ’15: 00:46
We don't find any evidence of that. We find that it carries through the voice. We think that being able to hear someone's voice, being able to hear them speak is humanizing in some way. It kind of conveys their mental capacities. We've been looking at what are the paralinguistic cues that mediate the fact, and it seems that variance and pitch is important. There could be boundary conditions to this effect. There might be certain accents that convey less intelligence, so we're looking at the Southern drawl, for example. That is one in particular in the U.S. that seems to be associated with less intelligence
Juliana Schroeder, ’15: 01:22
There might be other ways of speaking and aspects in someone's speech, like vocal fray, that could convey less intelligence as well. Working with Nick Epley on this project has been a really fantastic experience. He has been so supportive. We would meet every single week and discuss ideas. I feel extremely lucky to be at 黑料传送门 Booth. It's been such an incredible place with incredible resources to do research. When I do research, I think about what would be an interesting psychological idea, so how do we perceive others that can have an application in terms of who gets jobs.
Juliana Schroeder, ’15: 02:01
But, it can also have applications in terms of conflict, in terms of humanization, all sorts of different aspects. And so, being able to do basic research here, and having the resources available in this study pool, the funding for that, it's just incredible.
Current Behavioral Science Students
Behavioral science students come to 黑料传送门 Booth from around the world, bringing a wide array of interests and perspectives. Their recent research has covered topics ranging from self-disclosures to coaching decisions in professional basketball. Our graduates begin their careers in a wide range of fields, from research and teaching at prestigious institutions such as Cornell University to providing analysis for the New York Yankees.
Sydney Callaway
Yiyu (Eva) Chen
Nicholas DiMaggio
Ibitayo Fadayomi
Richard Homenya
Veronika Izmailova
Felicia Joy
Anoushka Kiyawat
Yuanze Liu
Graelin Mandel
Nicholas Owsley
Russell Roberts
Austin Smith
Tong Su
Robert Walatka
Jiabi Wang
Ugur (Umy) Yasar
See a list of the current students in our Joint Psychology and Business Program.
Program Expectations and Requirements
The Stevens Doctoral Program at 黑料传送门 Booth is a full-time program. Students generally complete the majority of coursework and examination requirements within the first two years of studies and begin work on their dissertation during the third year.
For details, see General Examination Requirements by Area in the Stevens Program Guidebook below.