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==About Me== | |||
I am a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. | |||
The research I am currently most actively involved in examines the behavioral and psychological issues related to decisions about energy use and climate change. This work, mostly with Tamar Krishnamurti and Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, includes topics such as the design of field studies to test behavior change interventions, understanding the barriers to energy efficiency in both commercial and residential sectors, and preparedness, resiliance, and reliability of individuals and organizations in the face of climate change induced events (e.g., hurricanes). | |||
My second line of research, stemming from my dissertation work with my advisor Baruch Fischhoff, looks at the psychology of experimental methods. Experiments often come out in unexpected ways, and this work has found that people tend to think unexpected results were caused by a flawed experiment, and, in turn, not worth sharing with the scientific community. | |||
A third line of research looks at human altruism using the methods of experimental economics. This work with John Miller, Roberto Weber, and Sudeep Bhatia has specifically examined when and why people are willing to endure harm to prevent harm to others. | |||
==Contact Info== | ==Contact Info== | ||
[[Image:Davis-alex_150x200.jpg|110px|thumb|right|Alexander L. Davis]] | [[Image:Davis-alex_150x200.jpg|110px|thumb|right|Alexander L. Davis]] | ||
Revision as of 06:04, 21 September 2013
About Me
I am a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University.
The research I am currently most actively involved in examines the behavioral and psychological issues related to decisions about energy use and climate change. This work, mostly with Tamar Krishnamurti and Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, includes topics such as the design of field studies to test behavior change interventions, understanding the barriers to energy efficiency in both commercial and residential sectors, and preparedness, resiliance, and reliability of individuals and organizations in the face of climate change induced events (e.g., hurricanes).
My second line of research, stemming from my dissertation work with my advisor Baruch Fischhoff, looks at the psychology of experimental methods. Experiments often come out in unexpected ways, and this work has found that people tend to think unexpected results were caused by a flawed experiment, and, in turn, not worth sharing with the scientific community.
A third line of research looks at human altruism using the methods of experimental economics. This work with John Miller, Roberto Weber, and Sudeep Bhatia has specifically examined when and why people are willing to endure harm to prevent harm to others.
Contact Info
- Alexander L. Davis
- Carnegie Mellon University
- 5000 Forbes Avenue
- Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
- Email me through OpenWetWare
Education (CV)
- 2012, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University, Behavioral Decision Research
- 2009, MS, Carnegie Mellon University, Behavioral Decision Research
- 2007, BS, Northern Arizona University, Psychology
Research and Lab Notebooks
Psychology of Methodology
What are the important psychological aspects of designing, implementing, interpreting, and reporting experimental research?
Communicating Uncertain Experimental Evidence
To what degree are unexpected data attributed to methodological error in foresight and hindsight, and how does this relate to decisions to share the data?
Incentives, Error, and Data Sharing
Do incentives undermine decisions to share data when error in the data is possible?
Backdating Causal Theories
How do we evaluate theories that were not considered beforehand?
- Notebook
- [[Media: | Manuscript pdf]]
- Materials, Data, Statistical Analyses
Human Altruism
How do humans behave when they can prevent harm to others by incurring it on themselves?
Generosity Across Contexts
Are we more altruistic when preventing harm to others?
Are Preferences for Harming Others Rational?
Are choices to inflict harm on ourselves or others consistent with the generalized axiom of revealed preferences?
- [[User:| Notebook]]
- [[Media:]]
Human Behavior and Electricity Consumption
What are the cognitive and motivational factors involved in understanding one's electricity consumption?
Setting a Standard for Energy Pilot Studies
Do pilot studies of residential energy use meet the standards of clinical trials?
- [[User:| Notebook]]
- Manuscript pdf
- [ Materials, Data, Statistical Analyses]
Experiments on In-Home Display Design
What features of an in-home electricity display promote learning?
Predicting Volunteering in Energy Efficiency Programs
Can we predict who volunteers for energy efficiency programs?
- [[User:| empty]]
- Manuscript pdf
- Materials, Data, Statistical Analyses
In the Problem Pit
How can laypeople be involved in solving scientific problems?
- Notebook
- [[Media: | Manuscript pdf]]
- Materials, Data, Statistical Analyses
One Good Trial
What does it take to do an energy efficiency trial up to FDA's standards?
- [[User:| empty]]
- [[Media:| Manuscript pdf]]
- [ Materials, Data, Statistical Analyses]
Methodology of Psychology
How can prescriptive approaches to scientific research help our cognitive and social limitations? I'm writing a book. Not sure what to call it yet. I'll make it available, for free, and I'd very much appreciate comments, critiques, suggestions or whatever. Since it is free, if you feel inclined to show your gratitude to me financially, I suggest donating to kiva.org or your favorite charity.
The File-Drawer Problem (Dissertation)
Do we share data when we should?
Courses I want to make
Research101
My take on everything you need to know to complete an experimental research project.
Other
Adaptive pretesting: Adaptive design for pretesting: How can we use adaptive design to develop very strong experiments efficiently? We may want to test our auxiliary assumptions 'online' until they converge into a reasonable risk level. Stats for Social Sciences: Rest assured there will be no p-values. Cohen et al, applied regression Advanced Stats: Rest assured there will be no p-values. Cosma's Class; Bayesian Data Analysis; Gelman and Hill; Intro to Cognitive Psychology: Human thinking, reasoning, perception, etc. Intro to Social Psychology: Motivation, social cognition, etc. Intro to Experimental Economics: Real human behavior in microeconomics and game theory. Kagel and Roth: Handbook of Expeirmental Economics; Plott and Smith: Handbook of experiment economics results Computer Science for Social Sciences: Python, Octave, R; Stats; Complexity Theory; Sipser: Introduction to the theory of computation Decision Theory: Raiffa; Levi? Seidenfeld; Savage; Ramsey; Berger: Statistical Decision Theory and Bayesian Analysis; Gilboa: Theory of decision under uncertainty; Pratt and Raiffa: Statistical Decision Theory; Kadane (2011; pg. 1-4) has a nice demonstration of how to be a dutch bookie. Behavioral Decision Research: Normative, Descriptive, Prescriptive; Poulton; K&T; von Winterfeldt and Edwards; Raiffa and Tversky: Decision-Making; Gigerenzer: Adaptive Thinking Game Theory: Von Neumann and Morgenstern; Luce and Raiffa: Games and Decisions Behavioral Game Theory: Camerer: Behavioral Game Theory; Builds on Decision Theory with empirical evidence. Prereqs: Decision theory; stats Computational Cognitive Science: Covers three of the most successful computational models: ACT-R; Church; Connectionist; Anderson: How can the mind exist? Psychology of Science: Herb Simon; Gorman; Klahr; Wason; Klayman and Ha;Carruthers, Stich and Siegal: The cognitive basis of science Philosophy of Science: Peirce; Carnap; Wittgenstein; Quine; Duhem; Lakatos; Kuhn; Popper; Van Bovens and Hartmann; Mayo; Suppes; Machine Learning: MacKay: information theory, inference and learning algorithms; Hastie, Tibshirani and Friedman: The elements of statistical learning; Bishop: Pattern recognition and Machine Learning; Human and Artificial Intelligence; How can human performance be elucidated by comparing it to modern artificial intelligence methods. For examaple, how does human knowledge representation compare to an ontology? Applications include drug discovery.
Publications
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Preparing for smart grid technologies: A behavioral decision research approach to understanding consumer expectations about smart meters
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421511009244
