Michael L. DeKay
Professor DeKay's research is focused on the psychology of judgment and decision making. Recent and ongoing research projects involve perceptions of health, safety, and ecological risks; precautionary reasoning; information distortion in risky decisions; the perceived fungibility of outcomes in repeated decisions; and applications in environmental and medical decision making.
Background
Professor DeKay holds a BS (1985) in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, an MS (1987) in chemistry from Cornell University, and an MA (1992) and PhD (1994) in social psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 1996, he completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in medical decision making at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. From 1996 to 2007, he was a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy and in the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management.Selected Publications
DeKay, M. L. (2009). Physicians' anticipated regret and diagnostic testing: Comment on Hozo & Djulbegovic, 2008. Medical Decision Making, 29, 317-319.
DeKay, M.L., Patino-Echeverri, D., & Fischbeck, P.S. (2009). Distortion of probability and outcome information in risky decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109, 79-92.
Attari, S., Schoen, M., Davidson, C., DeKay, M. L., Bruine de Bruin, W., Dawes, R., & Small, M. (2009). Preferences for change: Do individuals prefer voluntary action, soft regulations, or hard regulations to decrease fossil fuel consumption? Ecological Economics, 68, 1701-1710.
Willis, H. H., & DeKay, M. L. (2007). The roles of group membership, beliefs, and norms in ecological risk perception. Risk Analysis, 27, 1365-1380.
DeKay, M. L., & McClelland, G. H. (1996). Probability and utility components of endangered species preservation programs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 2, 60-83.