Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Rich Gonzalez Receives Distinguished Faculty Achievement Award
For more than 20 years, Richard Gonzalez has applied statistics and mathematical models to complex, real-world problems, including how people make decisions. His quantitative techniques have resulted in discoveries in psychology, business, design, medicine and neuroscience.
Gonzalez is a professor of psychology and professor of statistics, LSA; research professor, ISR Center for Human Growth and Development; and professor of marketing, Ross School. His work on the nonlinear weighting of probability combines formal analysis with empirical date. His identification of two components in decision weights: sensitivity to probability and risk attitude, is considered one of the most important developments in prospect theory. Gonzalez’ widely cited research on analytic strategies for interdependent relationships such as married couples and mother-child pairs has improved psychologists’ ability to understand and model these relationships and has made his “Data Analysis for Experimental Design” (Guilford Press, 2009) a classic.
Gonzalez also has investigated cultural differences in consumer choice and has applied choice models to product development and measurement of consumer preferences. His other research interests include developing models of mediation, examining the role of Bayesian statistical models in psychology and developing analytic methods for brain imaging. Four to six graduate students and more than 10 undergraduate students typically work in his lab each semester. He has chaired or served on 51 dissertation committees and has nurtured a generation of researchers, many of whom are leaders in their fields. He co-founded the Design Science doctoral program which has flourished under his leadership as co-director. Gonzalez has published more than 85 book chapters and articles in an array of journals, including Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Management Science, and Cognitive Psychology. He serves on the Research Center for Group Dynamics Executive Committee and the Institute for Social Research Policy Committee, among others. Gonzalez chaired the Department of Psychology from 2002-07. He has been elected a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the American Psychological Association, the Society for Multivariate Experimental Psychology and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology.
