George Wu

George Wu studies the psychology of decision making; decision analysis; and cognitive biases in bargaining and negotiation. Additionally, he has received research funding as part of a 3-year, $3.6 million project entitled "Enhancing the Human Experience through Behavioral Science: New Paths to Purpose," to advance the behavioral science of purpose. Project research explores how people adopt, pursue, and fulfill their intentions to accomplish something that is meaningful to the self, and often is of consequence to the world beyond the self."

Wu''s research has been published widely in a number of journals in economics, management science, and psychology, including Cognitive Psychology, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Management Science, Psychological Science, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Prior to joining the Chicago Booth faculty in 1997, Wu was on the faculty of Harvard Business School as an assistant and associate professor in the managerial economics area and then in the negotiation and decision making group. He also has worked as a lecturer at Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to graduate school, Wu worked as a decision analyst at Procter & Gamble.

Wu is a a former department editor of Management Science and is on numerous other editorial boards, including Decision Analysis, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, and Theory and Decision. He earned a bachelor's degree cum laude in applied mathematics with a concentration in decision and control in 1985, a master''s degree in applied mathematics in 1987, and a PhD in decision sciences in 1991, all from Harvard.

Publications

• With Nathanael Fast and Chip Heath, “Common Ground and Cultural Prominence: How Conversation Strengthens Culture,” Psychological Science (2009).

• With Richard Larrick, "Claiming a large slice of a small pie: Asymmetric Disconfirmation in Negotiation," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2007).

• With Uri Gneezy and John List, "The Uncertainty Effect: When a risky prospect is valued less than its worst possible outcome," Quarterly Journal of Economics (2006).

• With Cade Massey, "Detecting Regime Shifts: The Causes of Over- and Underreaction," Management Science (2005).

• With Richard Gonzalez, "On the Shape of the Probability Weighting Function," Cognitive Psychology (1999).