Kathleen Vohs
Helping us exercise more self-control, how money makes us feel more independent, and why women ‘own’ sex.
Intro
Dr. Kathleen Vohs is a psychologist whose research has been embraced by the world’s most influential leaders, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Barack Obama, to name just two1. She is currently the Land O'Lakes Chair in Marketing at Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota, holding the title of Distinguished McKnight University Professor. In her two decades of postdoctoral research, she has made significant contributions to social psychology and behavioral science, especially within her core interests of self-regulation, finding meaning in life, the psychology of money, and heterosexual sexual negotiations. Vohs has authored more than 250 scholarly publications and has been the editor of 9 books. She is particularly well-known for her longtime collaboration with social psychologist Roy Baumeister.
For decades, economists have had the last (and often the only) word on money, and yet some of the biggest worldwide events of recent history stem from a failure to understand the psychology of money. The time is now for psychological scientists to delve into why and how even the mere idea of money can change responses and behaviors.2
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
