Department of
Psychological and Brain Sciences

Research Topics

• Behavioral Economics / Judgment and Decision Making
• Computational Modeling
• Behavioral Science
• Bayesian Data Analysis

Representative Publications

Pleskac, T. J., Cesario, J., Johnson, D. J., & Gagnon, G. (2026). Modeling police officers’ deadly force decisions in an immersive shooting simulator. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000542

Pleskac, T. J., Kyung, E. J., Chapman, G. B., & Urminsky, O. (2026). Blinded versus unblinded review: A field study on the equity of peer-review processes. Management Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.01646

Pleskac, T. J., Yu, S., Grunevski, S., & Liu, T. (2023). Attention biases preferential choice by enhancing an option’s value. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 152(4), 993–1010. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001307

Pleskac, T. J., Conradt, L., Leuker, C., & Hertwig, R. (2021). The ecology of competition: A theory of risk–reward environments in adaptive decision making. Psychological Review, 128, 315–335. https://doi.org/10.1037/rev0000261

Kvam, P. D., Busemeyer, J. R., & Pleskac, T. J. (2021). Temporal oscillations in preference strength provide evidence for an open system model of constructed preference. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-87659-0

Tump, A. N., Pleskac, T. J., & Kurvers, R. H. (2020). Wise or mad crowds? the cognitive mechanisms underlying information cascades. Science Advances, 6(29), eabb0266. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abb0266

Hertwig, R., Pleskac, T. J., Pachur, T., & Center for Adaptive Rationality. (2019). Taming Uncertainty. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/11114.001.0001

Pleskac, T. J., Cesario, J., & Johnson, D. J. (2018). How race affects evidence accumulation during the decision to shoot. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(4), 1301–1330. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1369-6

Kvam, P. D., Pleskac†, T. J., Yu, S., & Busemeyer, J. R. (2015). Interference effects of choice on confidence: Quantum characteristics of evidence accumulation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(34), 10645–10650. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1500688112

Pleskac, T. J., & Hertwig, R. (2014). Ecologically rational choice and the structure of the environment. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5), 2000. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000013

Yu, S., Pleskac, T. J., & Zeigenfuse, M. D. (2015). Dynamics of postdecisional processing of confidence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 144(2), 489–510. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000062

Pleskac, T. J., & Wershbale, A. (2014). Making assessments while taking repeated risks: A pattern of multiple response pathways. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(1), 142. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031106

Pleskac, T. J., & Busemeyer, J. R. (2010). Two-stage dynamic signal detection: A theory of choice, decision time, and confidence. Psychological review, 117(3), 864–901. https://doi.org/10.1037/A0019737