Aneesh Rai

Aneesh Rai

PhD Candidate, Operations, Information, and Decisions

The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

About Me

I am a fifth-year PhD student in the Decision Processes group of the Operations, Information, and Decisions department at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. In the Fall of 2023, I am joining the Management & Organization Department at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business as an Assistant Professor.

My research is primarily focused on using insights from the judgment and decision-making literature to better understand what drives decisions to diversify organizations. Within this space, I examine how people’s perceptions of group diversity affect personnel selection decisions and influence how diverse organizations become. I also explore how the salience of diversity influences people’s decisions and leverage this knowledge to design interventions for organizations to increase their gender and racial diversity. Finally, my secondary research interest is using large-scale field experiments to test interventions to promote positive behavior change in organizations.

Prior to my doctoral studies at Wharton, I graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with a BA in Psychology, and minors in Computer Science and Cognitive Science.

View my CV.

Publications

(2022). A Field Experiment on Subgoal Framing to Boost Volunteering: The Tradeoff between Goal Granularity and Flexibility. (Journal of Applied Psychology).

PDF

(2022). Group Size and Its Impact on Diversity-Related Perceptions and Hiring Decisions in Homogeneous Groups. (Under 3rd round review at Organization Science).

(2022). When seeking help, women and racial/ethnic minorities benefit from explicitly stating their identity. (Nature Human Behaviour).

PDF

(2021). Megastudies improve the impact of applied behavioural science. (Nature).

PDF

(2020). The Isolated Choice Effect and Its Implications for Gender Diversity in Organizations. (Management Science).

PDF