Wändi Bruine de Bruin

Wändi Bruine de Bruin is Provost Professor of Public Policy, Psychology, and Behavioral Science in Dornsife’s Department of Psychology and in the Sol Price School of Public Policy. She is also the director of the USC Behavioral Science and Well-Being Policy initiative. Her expertise includes the psychology of judgment and decision making, behavioral science, risk perception and communication, and the psychology of aging. Her research aims to understand and inform how people make decisions about their health, climate change and sustainability, and household finances. She has published more than 130 peer-reviewed publications on these topics, in journals across relevant disciplines.

Wändi is a Fellow of the UK’s Academy for Social Sciences, of the Psychonomic Society, of the Society for Risk Analysis, and of the Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement (NETSPAR). She serves as an editorial board member for Perspectives on Psychological Science, the Journal of Experimental Psychology:Applied, the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, Decision, Medical Decision Making, the Journal of Risk Research, and Psychology and Aging. She previously served on the National Academy of Sciences committees on Respiratory Protection for the Public and Workers without Respiratory Protection Programs at their Workplaces and Communicating Science Effectively.

With colleagues in the Center for Economic and Social Research, Wändi has been using a national longitudinal COVID-19 survey to track risk perceptions and protective behaviors, food insecurity, age differences in mental health, and political polarization during the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. Other recent projects have focused on public understanding of climate change terminology, the role of social contacts in voting and vaccination behavior and using the Lloyd Register Foundation World Risk Poll to understand and inform people’s risk perceptions around the world.

• Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University