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Benjamin Converse

Benjamin Converse

Associate Professor of Public Policy and Psychology
Education & Training
Ph.D., Managerial and Organizational Behavior, University of Chicago, Booth School of Business (Center for Decision Research), 2010
B.A., Psychological and Brain Sciences, High Honors, Dartmouth College, 2004
Courses taught
Psychology for Leadership
Strategies and Processes of Negotiation
The Science of Self-Regulation and Decision Making
Areas of focus
Social Psychology

I am an associate professor of public policy and psychology, with appointments in the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, and the Department of Psychology. 

I study social psychology and the psychology of judgment and decision making. I investigate basic psychological processes – such as motivation, social judgment, and inferences about others’ mental states – that have critical implications for management, leadership, and policy.

Much of my work focuses on the question of how people achieve personal and group goals in a social world. With my lab group, the Social Behavior and Decisions Lab, and other collaborators, I am investigating questions such as: How do social judgments and evaluations change when people view collaborative efforts as a means to achievement versus as goals in themselves? How do the achievements of individuals’ groups affect their personal goal pursuit? How do people get beyond their own psychological perspectives to infer others’ thoughts, feelings, and opinions about the world? When and how can social exchange occur effectively and efficiently?

We are particularly concerned with how individual thought processes lead to decisions and behaviors that promote or undermine stable social systems. Research areas: social judgment, motivation and self-regulation, social exchange, perspective taking, and decision making.

Related Content

On Rivalry and Goal Pursuit: Shared Competitive History, Legacy Concerns, and Strategy Selection

Research

Seven studies converge to show that prompting people to think about a rival versus a nonrival competitor causes them to view current competitions as more connected to past ones, to be more concerned with long-term legacy, and to pursue personal goals in a more eager, less cautious manner. These results are consistent with a social–cognitive view of rivalry that defines it as a competitive relational schema. 

Instrumentality boosts appreciation: Helpers are more appreciated while they are useful

Research

We propose that in social interactions, appreciation depends on the helper’s instrumentality: The more motivated one is to accomplish a goal and the more one perceives a potential helper as able to facilitate that goal, the more appreciation one will feel for that helper. Three experiments support this instrumentality-boost hypothesis by showing that beneficiaries feel more appreciation for their helpers while they are receiving help toward an ongoing task than after that task has been completed or after the helper has been deemed no longer instrumental. 
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