Assistant Professor of Psychology
About
Dr. Andras Molnar is an Assistant Professor of Psychology, with education and research training at the intersection of psychology, economics, and business.
His research focuses on motivated preferences for information and the role of beliefs in social interactions, especially those involving moral behavior. He studies situations in which people have “non-instrumental” reasons to care about what they and others believe, as well as the implications of these motives for theories of decision-making, organizations, and public policy. At the heart of this work lies the idea that people are often motivated to hold (or avoid) specific beliefs, or to ensure that others hold specific beliefs, for their own sake, even if these beliefs cannot help them make better decisions, and at times, may even lead to worse decisions. In his research, he applies this concept, known as “belief-based utility,” to various topics relevant to both theory and practice, such as curiosity and information avoidance, belief polarization, revenge and forgiveness, and information disclosure.
Dr. Molnar’s work has been published in journals representing a broad range of disciplines, including Nature Human Behavior, Management Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Process, and the Journal of Marketing Research.
In addition to his research projects, he is dedicated to improving experimental research methods and open science practices. He has developed a free and open-source tool (https://smartriqs.com) that allows researchers to implement real-time interaction between participants in online surveys.
Courses taught by Dr. Molnar:
Pysch 449 Decision Processes
Psych 722 Advanced Decision Processes
