This page gives an overview of my research interests and expertise. To see a list of my publications, click here.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) IN ORGANISATIONS AND SOCIETY

I explore how we can harness artificial intelligence—including generative AI, machine learning and reinforcement learning—to advance human-centred outcomes in organisations and society. My work investigates both the promises and pitfalls of AI, examining how these technologies affect creativity, innovative, ethical and cooperative decision-making in teams and organisations. A core ambition of mine is to ensure that AI systems are designed for performance as well as fairness, transparency, and long-term societal benefit. I often collaborate across disciplines to develop interventions and governance frameworks that help align AI with democratic and human values.

Representative publication: Our paper “Generative AI enhances individual creativity but reduces the collective diversity of novel content” published in Science Advances (2024) shows that AI can help people be more creative (especially those who are inherently less creative) – but there are also potential trade-offs: in aggregate, when people rely on AI, their collective creativity (i.e, the diversity of novel ideas in the group) is reduced. Read more about it on NPR.

TEAMS, TALENT, AND INCLUSION

I study how organisations can design fairer, more inclusive, and higher-performing workplaces by rethinking how talent is identified, developed, and evaluated. My research focuses on the subtle behavioural and institutional factors—such as hiring procedures, performance reviews, and leadership norms—that shape outcomes for individuals and teams. By running large-scale field experiments in real-world settings, I aim to develop evidence-based tools that help organisations reduce bias, unlock diverse talent, and create environments where all individuals can thrive.

Representative publication: In our Science paper “Behaviorally designed training leads to more diverse hiring” (2025), we address the shortcomings of typically ineffective corporate diversity training: We test a new diversity training through a large-scale field experiment in a global telecommunications and engineering firm, finding that a combination of diversity salience, timeliness, task specificity, and the delivery by an organizational authority figure in the short training increases the shortlisting and hiring of underrepresented groups.

INEQUALITY IN ORGANISATIONS AND SOCIETY

I am deeply interested in how people perceive and respond to inequality—whether in income, opportunity, or institutional structure—and how these perceptions shape real-world behaviour. My work seeks to understand why some inequalities are tolerated while others provoke resistance, and how ideological, cognitive, or measurement-related biases influence what people see and what they ignore. Through a combination of experiments and data science, I aim to produce insights that inform more equitable policies and leadership practices.

Representative publication: Our Nature paper “Social dilemmas among unequals” (2019) studies how cooperation is affected by multiple inequalities. Using evolutionary game theory, we show that inequalities in incomes and productivities can undermine the evolution of cooperation – but there are conditions when things can get better too. An experiment illustrates some of these key take-aways. Read more about it on Bloomberg.

COOPERATION AND SOCIAL PREFERENCES

My research asks when and why people choose to cooperate, even when doing so is costly or uncertain. I study the economic, psychological, social, and strategic factors that support prosocial behaviour—ranging from beliefs about others’ preferences to the structure of interaction and communication. I also explore how misperceptions and biases can undermine cooperation, particularly in settings of inequality or competition. My goal is to better understand the conditions under which cooperation emerges and how it can be sustained over time and across diverse social contexts.

Representative publication: In our paper “Believed gender differences in social preferences” published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics (2024), we examine to what extent people believe men and women differ in generosity, cooperativeness, trustworthiness, and other social behaviours. While there are no systematic differences in men and women’s actual behaviours, we observe a persistent believed gender gap – i.e., women are believed to be more generous, cooperative and socially-minded than men. Our findings suggest childhood upbringing play an important role in memory and belief formation, and that these inaccurate beliefs have consequences for the workplace (e.g. who we want to work for).

SUSTAINABILITY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

I investigate how we can foster sustained, intergenerational cooperation to tackle climate change and other long-term societal challenges. My work highlights the critical role of behavioural factors—like social norms, voting mechanisms, and beliefs about what others expect—in motivating action for the collective good. I aim to identify institutional designs and interventions that empower individuals to act in the interest of future generations, even when the immediate benefits are uncertain or delayed. Many of these findings have informed international policy dialogues on climate, wellbeing, and development.

Representative publication: Our paper “Cooperating with the future” published in Nature (2014) lays bare the challenge of intergenerational cooperation: when there is no way to reciprocate previous generations’ kind (or unkind) behaviour, how do we establish and maintain sustainable behaviours? In this paper, we focus on the role of institutions—in particular, democracy—in maintaining intergenerational cooperation. If you are interested to learn more, there’s a short video and a helpful commentary that tells you more about this work. You can also read more about it in the Huffington Post.