Irwin Levin Ph.D.

Academic History

·         PhD in Psychology, UCLA, 1965

·         MA in Psychology, UCLA, 1963

·         BA in Mathematics, UCLA, 1960

Expertise

·         Analysis of decision making processes; individual differences in framing effects; development of decision-making competence

Awards

·         Regents Award for Faculty Excellence, 1998

·         University of Iowa nominee for the U.S. Professors of the Year Program, 2002

·         Ray William Spearman Research Fellowship, Tippie College of Business, 2002-2005, 2002

Grants

·         National Science Foundation Grant No. SES-0001316, "Tracking individual differences in decision making", 2000-2003, $164,600.

·         National Science Foundation Grant No. SES 02-17620, "Development of individual differences in decision biases",2002-2005, $262,000.

·         2002: Spelman-Rockefeller program grant, "development of tasks for studying biases in children". $6000.

·         National Science Foundation Grant, "The combined roles of cognition and emotion in decision making: Studies with neurologically-impaired patients and controls". 2004-2007, $291,000.

·         2005-2007: Supplemental Award to NSF Grant No. SES-50984, Research Experience for Undergraduates, $14,400.

Selected Publications

Levin, I. Hart, S. S., Weller, J. A., & Harshman, L. (2007).  Stability of choices in a risky decision making task:  A 3-year longitudinal study with children and adults.  Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 20, 241-252.

Lauriola, M., Levin, I. P., & Hart, S. S. (2007).  Common and distinct factors in decision making under ambiguity and risk: A psychometric study of individual differences. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes , 104, 130-149.

Weller, J. A., Levin, I. P., Shiv, B., & Bechara, A.. (2007).  Neural correlates of adaptive decision making in risky gains and losses. Psychological Science, 18, 958-964.

         (Selected as “must-reading” for Faculty of 1000 Biology.)

Levin, I. P., Weller, J. A., Pederson, A. A., & Harshman, L. A.(2007)  Age-related differences in adaptive decision making: Sensitivity to expected value in risky choice.  Judgment and Decision Making, 2, 225-233.

Weller, J.A., Levin, I.P., Shiv, B., & Bechara, A. (in press) The effects of insula damage on decision making for risky gains and losses.`Social Neuroscience.

Xue, G.,  Lu, Z., Levin, I.P., Weller, J.A., Li, X., & Bechara, A. (2009) Functional dissociations of risk and reward processing in the medial prefrontal cortex.  Cerebral Cortex,19, 1019-1027;  published online on October 8 2008.

Levin, A. M., Cook, M., & Levin, I.P. (in press) Measuring and accounting for cross-country response biases in marketing food and drink products. Journal of International Consumer Marketing: Special Issue on Cross-Cultural Issues in International Consumer Marketing.

Peters, E., & Levin, I.P. (2008) Dissecting the risky-choice framing effect: Numeracy as an individual difference factor in weighting risky and riskless options. Judgment and Decision Making, 3, 435-448 (Lead Article).

Weller, J.A., Levin, I.P., & Bechara, A. (in press) Do individual differences in Iowa Gambling Task performance predict adaptive decision making for risky gains and losses? Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology.

Levin, A.M., & Levin, I.P. Packaging of healthy and unhealthy products for children and parents: the relative influence of licensed characters and brand names. Submitted for publication.

Weller, J.A., Levin, I.P., & Denburg, N. Risky decision making from age 5 to 85: Adaptive decision making for risky gains and losses. Submitted for publication.