Boaz Keysar

Professor

Boaz Keysar is the William Benton Professor in Psychology at the University of Chicago. He received his B.A. from the Hebrew University in 1984 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1989 under the mentorship of Sam Glucksberg. After serving as a visiting scholar at Stanford University, Keysar joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1991. Together with his students and collaborators, Keysar studies the relationship between decision-making and language use. He has contributed to the study of figurative language and to the understanding of perspective taking. Professor Keysar has made discoveries about the impact of using a foreign language on choice, the way that language modality affects reasoning, how language affects health decisions and negotiations, and more. His research has received substantial interest in media outlets such as Scientific American, NY Times, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, SF Chronicle, The Economist, Der Spiegel, China Daily, MSNBC, NPR, and Freakonomics.

Keysar’s honors include a Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, Guggenheim Fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship. He received major grants from NIH and NSF. He was awarded the President’s Service award by President Clinton for his non-profit work.


Veronica Vazquez Olivieri
PhD Student 

Veronica is a doctoral student in the Cognition program working with Dr. Boaz Keysar. She received her BA in Psychology with a minor in Sociology from Emory University in 2019. While at Emory, Veronica worked as a research assistant in the Memory Development Lab of Dr. Patricia Bauer and in the Speech and Language Perception Lab of Dr. Lynne Nygaard.

Veronica’s research interests lie at the intersection of higher-level social cognition and decision making and how this affects the way we perceive the world, evaluate events, decide what actions to take, and how we interact with others.

 

Zeynep Aslan
PhD Student 

Zeynep is a doctoral student in the Cognition program working with Boaz Keysar. She received both her BA and MA in Psychology from Koç University. During her graduate studies, she worked in the Language and Cognition Lab under the guidance of Dr. Tilbe Göksun and studied the bi-directional interaction between language and emotion processing.

Broadly, Zeynep is interested in understanding whether and how the language we speak affects our everyday decisions, interactions and experiences.

 

Louisa Belian
PhD Student 

Louisa is a doctoral student in the Cognition program working with Boaz Keysar. She received her B.A. in Cognitive Science in Spring 2021 from the University of California, Berkeley.

Louisa is broadly interested in exploring the relationship between language and persuasion. She is particularly interested in how verbal and visual communication influences perceptions of power, negotiation, and decision-making.

 

Claire Guang
PhD Student 

Claire is a doctoral student in the Cognition program working with Boaz Keysar. She received her B.A. in Psychology with minors in Cognitive Science and Chinese from Carleton College in Spring 2021. After college, she worked as a project coordinator and lab manager for the Cognition, Learning, and Development Lab under Nicole McNeil.

Claire’s research interests broadly include the interplay between language context and cognitive processes in shaping the conceptual understanding that underlies the decision-making process.

 

Kris Peng

Lab Assistant

Kris is a fourth-year undergraduate at the University of Chicago majoring in Psychology and minoring in Data Science. She is primarily interested in decision-making and its relationship with language, past experience, and emotion. She is also interested in exploring how data science can serve as a tool in psychology research, ranging from data mining, machine learning, to big data.

 

PhD Alumni

Leigh Grant (2023) 

     Human Factors Scientist, Exponent

Janet Geipel (2021)

     Lecturer, University of Exeter Business School

Ka Ying Becky Lau (2020)

     Senior Design Researcher, Kandji

Sayuri Hayakawa (2017)

     Assistant Professor, Oklahoma State University

James Vandermeer (2013)

     Patrol Officer, Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, DC

Shiri Lev-Ari (2010)

     Lecturer, Royal Holloway University of London

Shali Wu (2007)

     Professor, Kyung Hee University

Shuhong Lin (2006)

     College Admissions Counselor, Acacia College Admissions

Senay Ibrahim (2006)

     Professor, Üsküdar University

Anne Henly (2004)

     Senior Instructional Professor, University of Chicago

Dale Barr (1999)

     Senior Lecturer, University of Glasgow

Sid Horton (1999)

     Associate Professor, Northwestern University

Alumni

Christopher Cardenas, Ellise Kurczewski, Hina Singh, Ethan Reiter, Jack Westhead, Tommy Hsee, Songyang Zhang, Mahika Hari, Ben Lee, Madison Rhee, Cissy Choy, Elliot Lin, Dilan Tulan, Yuwen Chen, Giselle Yang, Yinqing Zheng, Jin Ke, Jan Rodriguez-Cruz, Alex Guman, Beth Choi, Chloe Zhong, Bonnie Hao, Nathan Goldthwaite, Shannon Chung, Risa Akiba, Lee Dong, Nastya Shvedova, Emily Bansemer, Ilanis Rodriguez, Maria Alondra Cabrera, Isabel Figueroa, Nick Saah, Louis Schaffer, Nairi Brown, Rui, Lee Don, Yarra Elmasry, Jaehwan Song, Wenjie Han, Jiayuan Yue, Josephine Mah, Anyi Wang, Nishant Aggarwal, Gabino Sanchez, Eric Neumann, Lorraine Tang, Pak Lun Ng, Cheryl Chan, Tiffany Yue, Jiwei Yao, Sijie Huang, Itzel Velazquez, Angel Toro, Carolina Stainfeld, David West, Chenyang He, Yi Huang, Ruochong Ji, Richy Meleus, Allegra Hatem, Chun Tung Tsui, Ruochong Alice Ji, Karina Cheung, Angel Wang, Kalina Kalyan, Hanson Lu, Jingru Wang, Ivy Yeung, Joey Wong, Xinyu Wei, Jiuhe Zhang, Juliette Teunissen, Uriel Heller, Patricia Van Hissenhoven Florez, Rachel Liu, Zhenying Tian, Emory Richardson, Yue, Yang Gao, Benjamin Kollek, Lisa Luan, Daniella Rodriguez, Younggeun Yoo, Jaewon Yoon, George Adams, Jaime Alberto Ocampo Bermudez, Melina de Bona, Charles Chamberlain, Ana Gonzales, Jacqueline Friduss, Sophie Holtzmann, Ju Hongyi, Hyebin Park, Melissa Park, Ivy Sun, You Wang, Ching Hang “Joey” Wong, Alex Ye, Ryan Krocker, Kiehlor Mack, Reuben McCreanor, Kijin Kim, Ying Wu, Kaushal Addanki, Sonia Araiza, Angel Bohannon, Cathy Chen, Erica Cisneros, Will Craft, Tsong-Ping Chiu, Janet Flores, Jerome Goodrich, Anjali Kumar, Donya Mansoubi, Joshua Oberman, Lester Tong, Makiko Watanabe, Lile Yang, Vo Yoon, Xiao Bohannon, Daniel Cheng, Michelle Guo, Leighton Huch, Mike Santini, Sun Gyu An, Mariya Drachevskaya, Evan Bernard, Lilia Glass, Emily Ho, Kevin Lanham, Ayoung Lee, Roxana Mihet, Kenneth Oshita, Nicole Stupka, Maggie Tobin, Wei Luo, Lelia Glass, Chloe Goldman, David Lev-Ari, Andrew McLeod, Shane Blackman, Bridget Kiernan, Lilli Androphy, Lisa Brownstone, Colleen Cronin, Gina Lewandowski, Sai Li, Chelsey Norman, Hui Lin Tan, Allison Tung, John Wood, Daniel Carlton, Gabriela Gondim, Nathan Charles Grow, Lisa Johnson, Tracie Kenyon, Nathana O’Brien, Ina Patel, Anna Shakoko, Bowie Siu, Jiunwen Wang, Kenny Yu, Abbe Rose, Kira Gole, Moshe Hoffman, Robin Lassonde, Sixto Alex Munoz, Ashley Swanson, Meir Walters, Jennifer Flores, Amber Atwood, Susan Au, Mandy Beehner, Dawn Perry, Suzanne Swanson, Derrick Almassy, Katie Hoffman, Shaun Kenny, Mark O’Neill, Rachel Webb, Sarah Young, Jaclyn Pruitt, Jessica Jalbrzikowski, Colleen Smith, Elizabeth Medvedovsky, Tamilia Reed, Eric Piper, Sean Wereley, David Marks