Email Anita.tusche@queensu.ca Our lab is interested in the processes that drive variance in human decision-making across people, context and time. Here are four primary questions of our research program: Human beings are inherently social and a considerable part of our thoughts, decisions, and behaviour concerns the people around us. What processes explain our remarkable ability to understand others (e.g. empathy) and how does it shape choices that involve other people (e.g. strategic or altruistic behaviour)? In complex and constantly changing environments, we are faced with countless decisions and choice settings. Specialized neural codes for all possible types of scenarios seem inefficient. What choice model accounts for commonalities and differences across choice domains (i.e. dietary vs. altruistic vs. investing behaviour)? How can we increase ‘good’ decisions that yield long-term benefits for the decision-maker and/or society at large (e.g. eat healthier, save for retirement, be kinder, consumer choices that are environmentally friendly)? What is the specific role of attention for guiding people’s behaviour and how does it affect the processes in the brain? To address these questions, I draw on methods and insights from different disciplines, including psychology, neuroscience (especially fMRI), computational modelling (e.g. multivariate decoding techniques of brain data or drift-diffusion models), and behavioral economics (in a newly emerging field called neuroeconomics). Research interests decision making, dietary behaviour, fMRI, computational modeling, social neuroscience, neuroeconomics, machine learning, self-control View more Faculty profiles