Rate My Professor Russell Golman

Golman's interdisciplinary research combines economics, psychology, and mathematics to develop theories of individual and social decision-making. Key contributions include models of belief-based utility explaining information avoidance, curiosity-driven information-seeking, and attitudes toward uncertainty; behavioral game theory predicting strategic deliberation in one-shot games, response times, and time pressure effects; and analyses of complex social dynamics where actors innovate through decentralized information gathering. His work has appeared in leading journals such as Science Advances, Psychological Review, Cognitive Psychology, Decision, RAND Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Economic Perspectives, and Journal of Economic Literature. Prominent publications include 'Information Avoidance' (Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2016), 'Information Gaps: A Theory of Preferences Regarding the Presence and Absence of Information' (Journal of Economic Literature, 2017), 'A Dual Accumulator Model of Strategic Deliberation and Decision Making' (Psychological Review, 2020), 'The Demand for, and Avoidance of, Information' (Management Science, 2022), and 'Polya’s Bees: A Model of Decentralized Decision Making' (Science Advances, 2015). Golman edited a special issue of Games on Behavioral Game Theory and organized the 2017 Belief-Based Utility Conference funded by the Russell Sage Foundation and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. His honors include being a finalist for the Exeter Prize (2020) and an NSF IGERT Fellowship. These contributions have significantly influenced behavioral economics and decision sciences.