Jason Dana

Assistant Professor

Education:

BA, Psychology, Rutgers University; Ph.D., Behavioral Decision Research, Carnegie Mellon University

Department:

Psychology

Address:

Solomon Labs, 3720 Walnut St, Room C17A

Phone:

215-573-4088

Email:

danajd@psych.upenn.edu

Research Themes:

Decision Processes

Specific Research Areas:

Human decision processes

Research Synopsis:

My research lies at the interface of psychology and economics. I am broadly interested in how human decision making deviates from the normative mandates of rational choice theory, and how we modify rational choice assumptions to be more descriptively accurate. Most of this research is focused on two topics:
1) Perceptions of fairness, for which we bring participants into the laboratory and have them make real decisions about how to divide money with other people; and 2) Clinical vs. actuarial judgment – how formulaic rules outpredict human experts and why people resist such findings. I am particularly interested in the invalidity of interviews as a screening method. I am also affiliated with the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics program.

Representative Courses:

PSYC 600 Judgments and Decisions (co-taught with Jon Baron)
PPE 203 Behavioral Economics

Advisees:

Pavel Atanasov [Psychology Graduate student]

Appointments:

Psychology Graduate Group

Publications:

Dana, J., & Loewenstein, G. (2003). A social science perspective on gifts to physicians from industry. Journal of the American Medical Association, 290, 252-255.

Dana, J., and Dawes, R. (2004). The superiority of simple alternatives to regression for social science predictions. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 29(3), 317-331.

Gonzalez, C., Dana, J., Koshino, H., and Just, M. (2005). The Framing Effect and Risky Decisions: Examining Cognitive Functions with fMRI. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26, 1-20.

Dana, J., Cain, D.M., and Dawes, R. (2006). What you don’t know won’t hurt me: Costly (but quiet) exit in a dictator game. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 100(2), 193-201.

Dana, J., Weber, R. and J. X. Kuang. (2007). Exploiting Moral Wriggle Room: Behavior Inconsistent with a Preference for Fair Outcomes. Economic Theory, 33, 67-80.

Dana, J. (2007). Is task complexity an exception to the superiority of mechanized judment, or a barrier to it? International Journal of Forecasting, 23, 463-464.