Mentor Areas
Political information consumption: Are there different types of political information consumers? Which ones contribute to constructive discourse and which ones contribute to intergroup hostility and conflict?
Scientific decision-making: How do editors of scientific journals decide which papers to publish, reject, or retract? Which criteria do they think their peers use that they consider illegitimate practices?
Learning from experience: How do experts think about possible pasts (historical counterfactuals) and probable futures (conditional forecasts)? And how do experts respond to confirmation/disconfirmation of expectations?
Designing accountability systems: How do people cope with various types of accountability pressures and demands in their social world? When does accountability promote mindless conformity? Defensive bolstering of prior positions? Thoughtful self-critical analysis?
De-biasing judgment and choice. How can organization structure incentives and accountability procedures to check common cognitive biases such as belief perseverance and over-confidence? What adverse side effects can such de-biasing efforts have on quality of decision-making?
Description:
4998 Offering 1: Independent Study in “Intellectual Humility”
Mentor: Philip Tetlock
Description: Are some people better able to engage in constructive and respectful political dialogue than others? And if so, can this ability be taught or reinforced? This research program is exploring how intellectual humility and other epistemic virtues contribute to constructive political dialogue and will explore potential interventions for improving individuals’ abilities to engage in constructive political dialogue. Students will learn how to design methods and interventions to measure and improve individual differences in intellectual humility and openness to diverse perspectives. Students will be involved in all stages of research including design, implementation, analysis and write-up. Data will be analyzed in STATA or SPSS under guidance from the instructor. Data analysis methods may include t-tests, ANOVAs, chi-square tests, correlations, and regressions.
Prerequisite(s): STAT111 (or its equivalent)
Semester: Option to make the course a one-semester or full academic year experience. Also open to working with prospective Honor’s Thesis students.
4998 Offering 2: Independent Study in “Scientific Decision-making”
Mentor: Philip Tetlock
Description: How do editors of science journals decide which papers to publish, reject, and retract? Are there are scientific practices currently in use that many science editors consider illegitimate? Can we improve scientific decision making? This research program is going behind the scenes of science to better understand the decision-making process in publishing scientific papers. Students will learn about the culture of scientific publishing, and students will learn how to code interview data and design and implement survey procedures. Students will be involved in all stages of research including design, implementation, analysis and write-up. Data will be analyzed in STATA or SPSS under guidance from the instructor. Data analysis methods may include t-tests, ANOVAs, chi-square tests, correlations, and regressions.
Prerequisite(s): STAT111 (or its equivalent)
Semester: Option to make the course a one-semester or full academic year experience. Also open to working with prospective Honor’s Thesis students.
4998 Offering 3: Independent Study in “Improving Human Judgment”
Mentor: Philip Tetlock
Description: Do you ever wonder who on the news really knows what they are talking about—when they make predictions about the economy, elections, social trends, even sports? This research program will give students an opportunity to develop tools for improving the accuracy of social and political judgments (training tools that will be of use to professionals in fields as diverse as education, management, finance and intelligence analysis). Students will be involved in all stages of research including design, implementation, analysis and write-up. Data will be analyzed in STATA or SPSS under guidance from the instructor. Data analysis methods may include t-tests, ANOVAs, chi-square tests, correlations, and regressions.
Prerequisite(s): STAT111 (or its equivalent)
Semester: Option to make the course a one-semester or full academic year experience. Also open to working with prospective Honor’s Thesis students.
4998 Offering 4: Independent Study in “Scoping Out the Boundaries of the Unthinkable: Studying Judgments of Which Hypotheses in Psychological Science Should Be Off-Limits on Moral-Political Grounds”
Mentor: Philip Tetlock
Description: Should some categories of psychological hypotheses be ruled off-limits? Which categories? Who makes the judgments? On what grounds? And what should the consequence of violating the rules be? We will design exploratory survey and conduct experiments that assess how observers, with widely varying views, see these issues across all areas of psychology (gender, race relations, animal consciousness, inequality,…). Students will be involved in all stages of research including design, implementation, analysis and write-up. Data will be analyzed in STATA or SPSS under guidance from the instructor. Data analysis methods may include t-tests, ANOVAs, chi-square tests, correlations, and regressions.
Prerequisite(s): STAT111 (or its equivalent)
Semester: Option to make the course a one-semester or full academic year experience. Also open to working with prospective Honor’s Thesis students.
Interested students should first contact Cory Clark (cjclark@upenn.edu) to inquire about these opportunities!
Preferred Qualifications
Prerequisite(s): STAT111 (or its equivalent)
Details:
Preferred Student Year
First-year, Second-Year, Junior, Senior
Academic Term
Fall, Spring, Summer
I prefer to have students start during the above term(s).Volunteer
Yes
Yes indicates that faculty are open to volunteers.Paid
No
Yes indicates that faculty are open to paying students they engage in their research, regardless of their work-study eligibility.Work Study
No
Yes indicates that faculty are open to hiring work-study-eligible students.