Research Interests:

¨ Human decision-making in social, economic, organizational, and cultural contexts

¨ Risk perception, and risk management

¨ Evolutionary, ecological, and social rationality of decision making under risk and uncertainty

¨ Framing and cue use in risky choices

¨ Reference point-dependent decision making

¨ Intertemporal choice, delay discounting, and social discounting

¨ Brain and embodied mechanisms of decision-making

Scholarly Contributions:

The interdisciplinary research interests of Professor XT (XiaoTian) WANG 王晓田 focuses on the intersection of behavioral decision-making, risk perception, and evolutionary psychology. He uses psychological experimental methods to explore the essential characteristics of human decision-making and the adaptability of behavior. He was the first scholar to introduce evolutionary theory into the study of behavioral decision-making; he used evolutionary biology theories (e.g., foraging theory, life history theory, and kin selection theory) to understand cognitive biases and decision-making preferences. He conducted a series of experiments on the framing effect in risky choice and discovered how the size and composition of groups at risk systematically determine risk preference and the rise and fall of decision biases; he proposed the concept of kith-and-kin rationality based on these findings. Professor XT Wang and collaborators have also made original contributions to developing risk behavior scales and the impact of genetic and environmental factors on risk behaviors in different task domains. An NSF-funded study led by Professor XT Wang opened up a new direction in intertemporal decision-making and self-control research and discovered the signaling and regulatory effects of blood glucose fluctuation on delay discounting and self-control. In terms of decision-making theory, his original Tri-Reference Point (TRP) theory developed and expanded behavioral decision-making research and attracted scholars' attention and further examinations in different fields. His recent research focuses on how the finitude of life, death awareness, and intertemporal meditation regulate decision-making behavior. A meta-analytic study conducted by his team found a U-shaped delay discounting curve over the whole lifespan. They proposed a three-way tradeoff model between mortality, fertility, and parenting needs to explain and predict changes in age-related delay discount rates in intertemporal decision-making.