George Wu

Contact Info

George Wu
University of Chicago
Booth School of Business
5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL 60637
773-834-0519 (phone)
773-834-9134 (fax)
wu@ChicagoBooth.edu

Current Position

John P. and Lillian A. Gould Professor of Behavioral Science, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 2015-

Professor of Behavioral Science, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 2005-2015 (David W. Johnson term Professor, 2006-2007)

Associate Professor of Behavioral Science, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 2000-2005

Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 1997-2000

Past Positions

Associate Professor of Business Administration in Negotiation and Decision Making Unit, Harvard Business School, July 1997-August 1997

Visiting Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, September 1996-February 1997

Assistant Professor of Business Administration in Managerial Economics area) and Negotiation and Decision Making Unit (1994-1997), Harvard Business School, July 1991-June 1997

Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, January-June 1991

Education

Harvard University, Ph.D. in Decision Sciences, 1991

Harvard University, S.M. in Applied Mathematics, 1987

Harvard College, A.B. Cum Laude in Applied Mathematics (concentration in Decision and Control), 1985

Publications

Please email me if you would like an electronic copy of any paper. The links below also work if your library has electronic access to the respective journals. Many of the links use the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) System.

Refereed Articles

Markle, Alex, George Wu, Rebecca White, and Aaron Sackett (2018). "Goals as Reference Points in Marathon Running: A Novel Test of Reference-Dependence", Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 56, 1-32 [ABSTRACT] [Online Appendix]

Allen, Eric, Patricia Dechow, Devin Pope, and George Wu (2017). "Reference-Dependent Preferences: Evidence from Marathon Runners", Management Science 63, 1657-1672 [ABSTRACT] [Online Appendix] [Data]

de Lara Resende, Jose Guilherme and George Wu (2010). "Competence Effects for Choices involving Gains and Losses", Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 40, 109-132 [ABSTRACT]

Fast, Nathanael J., Chip Heath, and George Wu (2009). "Common Ground and Cultural Prominence: How Conversation Strengthens Culture", Psychological Science 20, 904-911 [ABSTRACT]

Discussed in New Scientist, Newsweek, Business Wire, and Canada.com

Larrick, Richard P., Chip Heath, and George Wu (2009).  "Goal-Induced Risk Taking in Negotiation and Decision Making", Social Cognition 27, 342-364 [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George and Alex Markle (2008). "An Empirical Test of Gain-Loss Separability in Prospect Theory" [click here for Electronic Companion Paper including a detailed error model analysis and additional analyses], Management Science 54, 1322-1335. [ABSTRACT]

• Awarded 2010 INFORMS Decision Analysis Publication Award for "best publication in 'decision analysis, broadly defined' " in calendar year 2008

Larrick, Richard P. and George Wu (2007).  "Claiming a large slice of a small pie: Asymmetric Disconfirmation in Negotiation", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 92, 212-233. [ABSTRACT]

• Discussed in U.S. News and World Report, Los Angeles Times, Business Week, TheStreet.Com, News and Observer
• Summary of research in Chicago Booth School of Business Capital Ideas

Gneezy, Uri, John List, and George Wu (2006). "The Uncertainty Effect: When a risky prospect is valued less than its worst possible outcome", Quarterly Journal of Economics 121, 1283-1309. [ABSTRACT]

• Discussed in The Wall Street Journal and Wired.Com

Massey, Cade and George Wu (2005).  "Detecting Regime Shifts: The causes of under- and overreaction", Management Science 51, 932-947. [ABSTRACT] [click here for Electronic Companion Paper including additional analyses, stimuli, and detailed instructions]

Wu, George Wu, Jiao Zhang, and Mohammed Abdellaoui (2005). "Testing Prospect Theory using Probability Tradeoff Consistency", Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 30, 107-131. [ABSTRACT]

Narasimhan, Chakravarthi, Chuan He, Eric Anderson, Lyle Brenner, Preyas Desai, Dmitri Kuksov, Paul Messinger, Sridhar Moorthy, Joseph Nunes, Yuval Rottenstreich, Rick Staelin, George Wu, and Z. John Zhang (2005). “Incorporating Behavioral Anomalies in Strategic Models”, Marketing Letters, 16, 361-373. [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George, Chip Heath and Marc Knez (2003).  "A timidity error in evaluations: Evaluators judge others to be too risk averse", Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 90, 50-62. [ABSTRACT]

• Discussed in Sloan Management Review (September 2001)

Wathieu, Luc, Lyle Brenner, Ziv Carmon, Amitava Chattopadhyay, Aimee Drolet, John Gourville, A.V. Muthukrishnan, Nathan Novemsky, Rebecca Ratner, Klaus Wertenbroch, and George Wu (2002). "Consumer Control and Empowerment: A Primer," Marketing Letters 13, 397-305. [ABSTRACT]

Gonzalez, Richard and George Wu (1999)  "On the shape of the probability weighting function", Cognitive Psychology 38, 129-166. [ABSTRACT]

Heath, Chip, Richard Larrick, and George Wu (1999)  "Goals as Reference Points", Cognitive Psychology 38, 79-109. [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George (1999). "Anxiety and Decision Making with Delayed Resolution of Uncertainty," Theory and Decision 46, 159-199. [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George and Richard Gonzalez (1999). "Nonlinear Decision Weights in Choice under Uncertainty", Management Science 45, 74-85.  [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George and Richard Gonzalez (1998). "Common Consequence Effects in Decision Making under Risk", Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 16, 115-139. [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George and Richard Gonzalez (1996). "Curvature of the Probability Weighting Function," Management Science 42, 1676-1690. [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George (1994). "An Empirical Test of Ordinal Independence," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 9, 39-60. [ABSTRACT]

Edited Volume

Keren, Gideon and George Wu, editors (2015). The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, West Sussex: John Wiley.

Book Chapters

Keren, Gideon and George Wu (2015). “A Bird’s Eye View of the History of Judgment and Decision Making” in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, Gideon Keren and George Wu (eds.), West Sussex: John Wiley.

Keren, Gideon and George Wu (2015). “A final glance backwards and a suggestive glimpse forwards” in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, Gideon Keren and George Wu (eds.), West Sussex: John Wiley.

Ordóñez, Lisa and George Wu (2014). “Goals and Decision Making” in Judgment and Decision Making at Work, Scott Highhouse, Reeshad S. Dalal, and Eduardo Salas (eds.), 114-139.

Wu, George, Richard P. Larrick, and Raegan Tennant (2012). “Biased Beliefs in Negotiations” in Oxford Handbook of Economic Conflict Resolution, Gary Bolton and Rachel Croson (eds), Oxford University Press, 254-265.

Larrick, Richard P. and George Wu (2012). “Risk in Negotiation: Judgments of Likelihood and Value” in Oxford Handbook of Economic Conflict Resolution, Gary Bolton and Rachel Croson (eds), Oxford University Press, 279-291.

Chiu, Andrew and George Wu (2010). "Prospect Theory" in James J. Cochran (ed), Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science, New York: Wiley.

Burns, Zach, Andrew Chiu, and George Wu (2010). "Overweighting of small probabilities" in James J. Cochran (ed), Wiley Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science, New York: Wiley.

Buchan, Nancy, Rachel Croson, Eric Johnson, and George Wu (2005). "Gain and Loss Ultimatums" in John Morgan (ed.), Advances in Applied Microeconomics (Volume 13): Experimental and Behavioral Economics, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1-13.

Wu, George and Cade Massey (2004). "Understanding under- and over-reaction" in Isabelle Brocas and Juan D. Carrillo (eds), The Psychology of Economic Decisions. Volume 2: Reasons and Choices, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 15-29.

Wu, George, Jiao Zhang, and Richard Gonzalez (2004). "Decison under risk" In Derek Koehler and Nigel Harvey (eds), The Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 399-423.

Eppel, Thomas, David Matheson, John Miyamoto, George Wu, and Stuart Eriksen (1992). "Old and New Roles for Expected and Generalized Utility Theories" in Ward Edwards (ed.), Utility Theories: Measurement and Applications, Boston: Kluwer, 271-293.

Invited Comment

Wu, George (2012). “Comment on ‘Obliquity’ (by John Kay),” Capitalism and Society 7(1), Article 5.

Wu, George (1996). "The Strengths and Limitations of Expected Utility Theory," Medical Decision Making 16, 9-10.

Reviews

Wu, George (2007). “The dialogue between psychology and economics: Obstacles and opportunities.” Review of Social Psychology and Economics by David De Cremer, Marcel Zeelenberg, and Keith Murnighan, Academy of Management Review 32 (2), 674-677.

Wu, George (2001). Review of Smart Choices by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa, Interfaces 31 (1), 131-132.

Wu, George (1996). "Closing the gap between economic theory and behavioral decision research," Review of Generalized Expected Utility Theory: The Rank-Dependent Model by John Quiggin, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 9, 229-230.

Unpublished Manuscripts

Sackett, Aaron M., George Wu, Rebecca J. White, and Alex B. Markle (2015). "Harnessing Optimism: How Eliciting Goals Improves Performance", under review

Li, Ye, Cade Massey and George Wu (2014).  "Learning to Detect Change", under review [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George, Chip Heath, and Richard P. Larrick (2008). "A prospect theory model of goal behavior" [ABSTRACT]

Gonzalez, Richard and George Wu (2003).  "Composition Rules in Old and New Prospect Theory" [ABSTRACT]

Shu, Suzanne and George Wu (2003). "Belief bracketing: Can partitioning information change consumer judgments?”

Wu, George (1999). "Temporal Risk and Probability Weights: A Descriptive Model of Delayed Resolution of Uncertainty" [ABSTRACT]

Wu, George and Richard Gonzalez (1999).  "Dominance Violations and Event Splitting in Decision under Uncertainty" [ABSTRACT]

Popular Press Articles

Larrick, Richard P., George Wu, and Chip Heath (1999).  "Raising the bar on goals", GSB Chicago 21 (2), 19-21

Other Activities

President: Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2011-2012

Associate Editor (Judgment and Decision Making): Management Science, 2012-

Department Editor (Decision Analysis): Management Science, 2006-2008

Associate Editor (Decision Analysis): Management Science, 1998-2005

Associate Editor: Decision Analysis, 2010-2013

Advisory Editor: Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 2000-

Coordinating Editor: Theory and Decision, 2005-

Editorial Board: Decision Analysis, 2000-; Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2002-2010, Applied Economics Research Bulletin, 2007-, Behavioral Science and Policy, 2010-

Guest Editor: Acta Psychologica, Special Issue (June 2000, Volume 104, Number 3)

Guest Editor: Decision Analysis, Special Issue on Psychology and Decision Analysis (November 2006)

Associate PI: TESS (Time-sharing experiments for the Social Sciences), 2009-

Reviewer for Professional Journals:

Acta Psychologica, Administrative Science Quarterly, American Economic Review, Cognition, Cognitive Psychology, Decision Analysis, Econometrica, Economic Inquiry, Economic Journal, Experimental Economics, Information Systems Research, Interfaces, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Journal of Business, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Economic Psychology, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Journal of Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Management Science, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Marketing Science, Medical Decision Making, Operations Research, Organization Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Review, Psychological Science, Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, Quantitative Marketing and Economics, Research on Economic Inequality, Review of Economic Studies, Sloan Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Theory and Decision

Executive Board Member: Society for Judgment and Decision Making, 2008-2013

Council Member: Decision Analysis Society, INFORMS, 1999-2002

Committee Member: INFORMS Decision Analysis Publication Award Committee (2001, 2003-2004, 2005 [Chair], 2008-2009)

Cluster Chair: Decision Analysis Track, TIMS/ORSA Joint National Meeting (Boston, April 24-27, 1994), INFORMS (Atlanta, GA, October 19-23, 2003)

Organizing Committee: Subjective Probability, Utility, and Decision Making (SPUDM) Conference (Mannheim, Germany, August, 1999)

International Scientific Committee: Foundations of Utility and Risk (FUR) Conference XI (Cachan, France, June, 2004; Rome, Italy, June, 2006; Barcelona, June 2008; Newcastle, England, June, 2010; Atlanta, Georgia, June, 2012)

Program Committee: Society for Judgment and Decision Making (JDM) Conference (2005-2008 [Program Chair, Long Beach, 2007])

Current Teaching (Course materials available on Canvas)

Business 38802: Managerial Decision Making [Executive MBA] (Summer 2017)

Business 38105: Advanced Negotiations [MBA] (Spring 2018)

Law 81002: Strategies and Processes of Negotiation (Winter 2018)

Past Teaching

Business 38885: Advanced Negotiations [Executive MBA] (Summer 2015)

Business 38103: Strategies and Processes of Negotiation [MBA] (Winter 2014)

Business 38002: Managerial Decision Making [MBA] (Winter 2012)

Business 38913: Foundations of Judgment and Decision Making [PhD with Reid Hastie] (Fall 2016)