Elke U. Weber
Princeton University
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Primary Section: 52, Psychological and Cognitive Sciences Secondary Section: 64, Human Environmental Sciences Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2020)
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Biosketch
Elke Weber is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Her research models decision-making under uncertainty and time delay in financial and environmental contexts from a psychological and neuroscience perspective. Her expertise in the behavioral decision sciences has been sought out by advisory committees of the National Academy of Sciences on Human Dimensions in Global Change, an American Psychological Association Task Force that issued a report on the Interface between Psychology and Global Climate Change, and Working Group III for the 5th and 6th Assessment Report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is past president of the Society for Neuroeconomics, the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the Society for Mathematical Psychology. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Risk Analysis, the Society for Experimental Psychology. She received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the Society for Risk Analysis and was elected to the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and the US National Academy of Sciences.
Research Interests
People’s decisions are not entirely analytic but also guided by emotions and/or rules of conduct. Dr. Weber’s research explores the full range of human goals and human information processes that shape our responses (to environmental change and energy technology transitions or other social change) with the objective of designing choice environments that facilitate more forward-looking responses. Decisions (including those that impact sustainability and the quality of our natural environment) are made within a dynamic social, institutional, and physical context. Our social networks tell us what others do. Following social norms confirms social identity and reduces processing costs, while norm violations have negative consequences. Dr. Weber’s recent research examines why and how the perceptions of specific norms—embedded in networks of other norms, attitudes, and beliefs—change, and how these dynamics be utilized to accelerate change and create tipping points in behavior.
