<< Back to Faculty 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 434-243-2885 converse@virginia.edu Garrett L001 Curriculum Vitae Personal Website Courses taught Psychology for Leadership Strategies and Processes of Negotiation The Science of Self-Regulation and Decision Making Areas of focus Leadership Social Psychology Benjamin Converse is an associate professor of public policy and psychology at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the Department of Psychology. His research focuses on motivation, social judgment, problem solving and decision making. He teaches courses related to leadership and negotiations. As the principal investigator of the Social Behavior and Decisions (SoBaD) Lab, Converse collaborates with postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate researchers to understand how people achieve personal and collective goals in a resource-constrained and social world. Recent projects have focused on competitive relationships, problem-solving strategies and long-term goal pursuit. His research has been published in journals such as Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, and American Psychologist, and has been covered in outlets such as The New York Times, The Economist, NPR, and The Wall Street Journal. His essays have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Scientific American. Related Content We instinctively add on new features and fixes. Why don’t we subtract instead? News Across a series of studies published this month in the journal Nature, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse and co-authors demonstrated that people tend to overlook the option to subtract parts when asked to change or improve something. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, they explore why ‘less is more’ is a hard insight to act on. Why People Forget that Less is Often More News Why, when solving problems, do people prefer adding things to getting rid of them? In an article for The Economist, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams and Benjamin Converse explain their research on subtractive improvements. Why Our Brains Miss Opportunities to Improve through Subtraction News In a new paper featured on the cover of Nature, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse and co-authors explain why people systematically overlook subtractive improvements. People systematically overlook subtractive changes Research A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient. Next Week, Next Month, Next Year: How Perceived Temporal Boundaries Affect Initiation Expectations Research To move from commitment to action, planners must think about the future and decide when to initiate. We demonstrate that planners prefer to initiate on upcoming days that immediately follow a temporal boundary. Slow Motion Increased Perceived Intent Research To determine the appropriate punishment for a harmful action, people must often make inferences about the transgressor’s intent. In courtrooms and popular media, such inferences increasingly rely on video evidence, which is often played in “slow motion.” Jump-starting early childhood education at home: Early learning, parent motivation, and public policy. Research By the time children begin formal schooling, their experiences at home have already contributed to large variations in their math and language development, and once school begins, academic achievement continues to depend strongly on influences outside of school. It is thus essential that educational reform strategies involve primary caregivers. 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. Investing in Karma: When Wanting Promotes Helping Research People often face outcomes of important events that are beyond their personal control, such as when they wait for an acceptance letter, job offer, or medical test results. We suggest that when wanting and uncertainty are high and personal control is lacking, people may be more likely to help others, as if they can encourage fate’s favor by doing good deeds proactively. View All
We instinctively add on new features and fixes. Why don’t we subtract instead? News Across a series of studies published this month in the journal Nature, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse and co-authors demonstrated that people tend to overlook the option to subtract parts when asked to change or improve something. In an op-ed for The Washington Post, they explore why ‘less is more’ is a hard insight to act on.
Why People Forget that Less is Often More News Why, when solving problems, do people prefer adding things to getting rid of them? In an article for The Economist, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams and Benjamin Converse explain their research on subtractive improvements.
Why Our Brains Miss Opportunities to Improve through Subtraction News In a new paper featured on the cover of Nature, Batten’s Gabrielle Adams, Benjamin Converse and co-authors explain why people systematically overlook subtractive improvements.
People systematically overlook subtractive changes Research A series of problem-solving experiments reveal that people are more likely to consider solutions that add features than solutions that remove them, even when removing features is more efficient.
Next Week, Next Month, Next Year: How Perceived Temporal Boundaries Affect Initiation Expectations Research To move from commitment to action, planners must think about the future and decide when to initiate. We demonstrate that planners prefer to initiate on upcoming days that immediately follow a temporal boundary.
Slow Motion Increased Perceived Intent Research To determine the appropriate punishment for a harmful action, people must often make inferences about the transgressor’s intent. In courtrooms and popular media, such inferences increasingly rely on video evidence, which is often played in “slow motion.”
Jump-starting early childhood education at home: Early learning, parent motivation, and public policy. Research By the time children begin formal schooling, their experiences at home have already contributed to large variations in their math and language development, and once school begins, academic achievement continues to depend strongly on influences outside of school. It is thus essential that educational reform strategies involve primary caregivers.
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.
Investing in Karma: When Wanting Promotes Helping Research People often face outcomes of important events that are beyond their personal control, such as when they wait for an acceptance letter, job offer, or medical test results. We suggest that when wanting and uncertainty are high and personal control is lacking, people may be more likely to help others, as if they can encourage fate’s favor by doing good deeds proactively.