Research Expertise and Interest

cognitive neuroscience, motivation, decision-making, executive functions, computational modeling

Research Description

Amitai Shenhav is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. He studies the mechanisms that give rise to motivation and decision-making, including what makes tasks demanding and how people choose whether and how to invest effort in those tasks. His lab addresses these questions using a combination of computational modeling and measures of behavior and neural activity (e.g., using functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography). Through the course of this work, he seeks to provide a better understanding of what drives human behavior, when and why people struggle with getting/staying motivated, and how to help them overcome these motivational barriers.