Nicholas Epley

About

is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Faculty Director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Research topics

• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Communication
• Internet privacy
• World Wide Web
• Cognitive psychology
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2021 · 91 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  People may want deep and meaningful relationships with others, but may also be reluctant to engage in the deep and meaningful conversations with strangers that could create those relationships. We hypothesized that people systematically underestimate how caring and interested distant strangers are in one's own intimate revelations and that these miscalibrated expectations create a psychological barrier to deeper conversations. As predicted, conversations between strangers felt less awkward, and…

  DOI

• Defining key concepts for mental state attribution

  Communications Psychology · 2024-04-11 · 78 citations

  articleOpen access

  The terminology used in discussions on mental state attribution is extensive and lacks consistency. In the current paper, experts from various disciplines collaborate to introduce a shared set of concepts and make recommendations regarding future use.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Demeaning: Dehumanizing others by minimizing the importance of their psychological needs.

  Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · 2020 · 76 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  We document a tendency to demean others' needs: believing that psychological needs-those requiring mental capacity, and hence more uniquely human (e.g., need for meaning and autonomy)-are relatively less important to others compared with physical needs-those shared with other biological agents, and hence more animalistic (e.g., need for food and sleep). Because valuing psychological needs requires a sophisticated humanlike mind, agents presumed to have relatively weaker mental capacities should…

  DOI

• A little good goes an unexpectedly long way: Underestimating the positive impact of kindness on recipients.

  Journal of Experimental Psychology General · 2022-08-18 · 72 citations

  articleSenior author

  Performing random acts of kindness increases happiness in both givers and receivers, but we find that givers systematically undervalue their positive impact on recipients. In both field and laboratory settings (Experiments 1a through 2b), those performing an act of kindness reported how positive they expected recipients would feel and recipients reported how they actually felt. From giving away a cup of hot chocolate in a park to giving away a gift in the lab, those performing a random act of ki…

  PublisherDOI

• Undersociality: miscalibrated social cognition can inhibit social connection

  Trends in Cognitive Sciences · 2022-03-25 · 66 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: Anchoring and Insufficient Adjustment in Everyday Judgment

  NSF · $73k · 2005–2007

Frequent coauthors

• Juliana Schroeder

  University of California, Berkeley

  27 shared

• Thomas Gilovich

  Cornell University

  24 shared

• Adam Waytz

  Northwestern University

  23 shared

• Eugene M. Caruso

  22 shared

• Xuan Zhao

  Stanford University

  16 shared

• Nadav Klein

  15 shared

• Carey K. Morewedge

  14 shared

• Michael Kardas

  Oklahoma State University

  14 shared

Labs

• Roman Family Center for Decision ResearchPI

  Social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other.

Education

• Ph.D., Psychology

  Cornell University

  2001

Awards & honors

• 2008 Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Perso…
• 2011 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contrib…
• 2015 Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality…
• 2018 Career Trajectory Award from the Society for Experiment…

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Reid Hastieh-71
• Ayelet Fishbachh-60
• Alex Kochh-27