David G. Rand

Faculty

David G. Rand

About

David Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and an Associate Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT Sloan, and the Director of the Human Cooperation Laboratory and the Applied Cooperation Team.

Bridging the fields of behavioral economics and psychology, David’s research combines mathematical/computational models with human behavioral experiments and online/field studies to understand human behavior. His work uses a cognitive science perspective grounded in the tension between more intuitive versus deliberative modes of decision-making, and explores topics such as cooperation/prosociality, punishment/condemnation, perceived accuracy of false or misleading news stories, political preferences, and the dynamics of social media platform behavior. His work has been published in peer-reviewed journals such Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the American Economic Review, Psychological Science, and Management Science. He has received widespread attention from print, radio, TV and social media outlets, and has also written popular press articles for outlets including the New York Times, Wired, New Scientist, and the APS Observer. He was named to Wired magazine’s The Smart List 2012: “50 people who will change the world,” chosen as a 2012 Pop!Tech Science Fellow, received the 2015 Arthur Greer Memorial Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Research, and was selected as fact-checking researcher of the year in 2017 by the Poytner Institute’s International Fact-Checking Network. Papers he has coauthored have been awarded Best Paper of the Year in Experimental Economics, Social Cognition, and Political Methodology.

David received his BA in Computational Biology from Cornell University in 2004 and his PhD in Systems Biology from Harvard University in 2009, was a post-doctoral researcher in Harvard University’s Department of Psychology from 2009 to 2013, and was an Assistant and then Associate Professor of Psychology, Economics, and Management at Yale University prior to joining the faculty at MIT.

Honors

David Rand wins two awards

Publications

Featured Publication

"​Shifting Attention to Accuracy Reduces Misinformation Sharing."

Pennycook, Gordon, Ziv Epstein, Mohsen Mosleh, Antonio Arechar, Dean Eckles, and David G. Rand. Nature (2021).

Featured Publication

"The Psychology of Fake News."

Pennycook, Gordon and David G. Rand. Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2021): 388-402.

"Character Deprecation in Fake News: Is it in Supply or Demand?"

McPhetres, Jonathon, David G. Rand, and Gordon Pennycook. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations. Forthcoming.

"Exploring Lightweight Interventions at Posting Time to Reduce the Sharing of Misinformation on Social Media."

Farnaz Jahanbakhsh, Amy X. Zhang, Adam J. Berinsky, Gordon Pennycook, David G. Rand, and David R. Karger. In Proceedings of the 24th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, New York, NY: Forthcoming. arXiv Preprint.

"Invisible Inequality Leads to Punishing the Poor and Rewarding the Rich."

Hauser, Oliver P., Gordon T. Kraft-Todd, David G. Rand, and Martin A. Nowak. Behavioral Public Policy. Forthcoming. Download Paper.

"Machine Learning as a Tool for Principled Investigation of Experimental Moderators: A Case Study Using In-Group Favoritism Caused by Pokémon Go."

Peysakhovich, Alexander and David G. Rand. Scientific Reports. Forthcoming.

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Recent Insights

Ideas Made to Matter

2 MIT Sloan professors named to top 40-under-40 list

Professors David Rand and Basima Tewfik research workplace topics such as imposter syndrome, and societal issues such as fighting online information.

May 13, 2021
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Ideas Made to Matter

Report details COVID-19’s impact on the digital economy

MIT research about the pandemic looks at economic fallout, the impact of government interventions, digital technology, and fighting misinformation.

Apr 1, 2021
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Media Highlights