“Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

— Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2023

Behavioral scientist using large-scale experiments to study how people decide whether collective action is worth taking, and how psychological interventions can build public support for tackling global challenges like climate change.

I am a doctoral candidate in social psychology at New York University, co-advised by Madalina Vlasceanu at Stanford University and Jay Van Bavel at NYU. My work is supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, an NYU Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, and a National Institute of Social Sciences Dissertation Grant.

Learn more about my experience on my CV.

Research Overview

I study how people decide whether collective action is worth taking. Across projects, I investigate the mechanisms that shape this decision, such as efficacy (will it work?), moral values (is it right?), and emotion (what does acting feel like?). I employ behavioral megastudies, cross-national experiments, and field research embedded in live policy debates, often comparing multiple theory-based interventions head-to-head to identify what works better than the alternatives, for which outcomes, and for whom.

See more detail about my publications here.

Efficacy beliefs and collective action

A central finding of my research concerns a belief that is often treated too broadly: whether people think action will produce meaningful results. Across two large U.S. studies, governmental response efficacy, the belief that government will effectively address the problem, emerged as one of the strongest and most consistent predictors of climate engagement, from political advocacy to lifestyle change. It matters more than believing action is merely possible, and it is distinct from believing institutions are responsive to public pressure. Governmental efficacy beliefs predict action especially strongly among Republicans, suggesting that a key barrier to cross-partisan mobilization is not only disagreement about climate change, but also doubt that acting will lead anywhere.

Testing interventions in live policy contexts

Psychological mechanisms should hold up in real political environments, where messages compete with monetary costs, organized opposition, and limited attention. In experiments on congestion pricing with nearly 20,000 residents of New York and Washington, D.C., the most effective intervention demonstrated that the policy delivers concrete benefits: cleaner air, faster commutes, and safer streets. Notably, this intervention increased policy support by 30% and showed no partisan divergence. Making a policy's benefits clear and believable can build support even for policies that impose personal costs. This makes efficacy-focused messaging a scalable and politically resilient strategy for sustaining contested climate policy.

Mobilizing advocacy at scale

Because systemic change requires public pressure, a major strand of my work identifies scalable strategies for mobilizing advocacy. I led a U.S. megastudy with a consortium of over fifty researchers, testing seventeen theory-based messages with more than 30,000 participants. The most consistently effective message paired collective efficacy with the positive emotions of acting together. Moral appeals grounded in binding values like purity and sanctity drove the most donations and worked for both Republicans and Democrats. And messages evoking both negative emotions, (e.g., anger and guilt) and positive ones (e.g., hope and pride) were especially effective at motivating advocacy.

Intervention ensembles

Much of behavioral science tests interventions one mechanism at a time. But the collective action problems I study are rarely governed by a single psychological barrier. People may need to believe that action will work, that it is morally justified, that others are acting too, that institutions can deliver, and so on. In new work, we tested whether coordinated combinations of interventions, or intervention ensembles, outperform single-mechanism designs.

Ensembles consistently beat their strongest individual components across outcomes, including climate policy support, real donation behavior, and reductions in partisan animosity. The strongest combinations aligned individual, collective, and institutional levers, resolving complementary psychological barriers rather than simply stacking more arguments. For complex societal challenges, behavioral science may need to move beyond the search for the single best mechanism and toward the design of coordinated intervention systems.

My research offers a pragmatic optimism: people can be mobilized across partisan lines when collective action feels rewarding, when institutions are seen as effective, and when messages connect to shared values. My goal is to turn these insights into psychological strategies that build the public support ambitious collective solutions require.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

  • 2025 - NYU Climate Initiative Conference (New York, NY)

    Panel discussion and invited talk: Mobilizing Collective Climate Action: A Large-Scale Study of 17 Behavioral Interventions in the U.S.

  • 2025 - Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention (Denver, CO)

    Symposium Talk: Behavioral Interventions for Collective Climate Action.

  • 2024 - Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention (San Diego, CA)

    Symposium Talk: The Differential Impact of Climate Interventions along the Political Divide.

  • 2023 - International Conference on Environmental Psychology (ICEP) (Aarhus, Denmark)

    Symposium Talk: Cultural Individualism/Collectivism Moderates the Effects of Climate Action Interventions.

  • 2023 - NYU Psychology Department Social Speaker Series

    Talk: Political Ideology Differences in Responses to Climate Action Interventions.

SELECTED EXPERIENCE

COLLECTIVE COGNITION )
Member, Stanford Climate Cognition Lab
PI: Dr. Madalina Vlasceanu

2019)
Visiting Researcher, Cambridge Social Decision-Making Lab
PI: Dr. Sander van der Linden

COLLECTIVE PRESENT)
Member, NYU Center for Conflict and Cooperation
PI: Dr. Jay Van Bavel

BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE FOR POLICY LAB (2021 - 202
Research Specialist, Princeton Behavioral Science for Policy Lab
PI: Dr. Elke U. Weber

PROGRAM FOR ANXIET)
Research Assistant, UM Program for Anxiety, Stress, & OCD
PI: Dr. Kiara Timpano

COLUMBIA COUPLES LAB (
Research Intern, Columbia Couples Lab
PI: Dr. Niall Bolger