Graduate Students

Amabel (she/her) is a sixth-year PhD candidate in social psychology working with Dr. Daphna Oyserman. Amabel received her B.A. in Psychology with a minor in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University in 2019. Her current research interests broadly focus on applying a cognitive frame to understand how culture shapes decision-making in ambiguous contexts.

Drew is a fifth-year PhD candidate in social psychology working with Dr. Norbert Schwarz. Drew received his B.A. from Northwestern University in 2016 with a double major in Psychology and Statistics. After receiving his BA, he worked for three years at a digital advertising agency exploring interests in attitude and behavior change with advertising messaging. His current research interests include the situational factors that influence judgement and decision making, humor, and how we use our feelings as information to guide our judgments.

Steve is a fourth-year PhD candidate studying consumer behavior working with faculty in the Marshall School and Dr. Norbert Schwarz. Prior to joining USC, Steve received his MSc in Consumer Psychology from Queen’s University in Canada in 2018 and his BS in Marketing and Accounting from Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business in 2016. He studies how consumer behavior changes when we recruit others and utilize technology to make decisions.

Maansi is a third-year PhD student in behavioral marketing working with faculty at Marshall and Dr. Nobert Schwarz. Maansi received her BBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in 2021. Her current research interests are in consumer privacy and corporate social activism.

Andrew received his PhD in Social Psychology in 2024. HIs work with Daphna Oyserman focused on identity based motivation, specifically the theory of dynamic construction, and how it informs interactive media, games, and user experience design. He is currently a business operations principal at Powerhouse.

Ian (he/they) is a Postdoctoral scholar in social and computational neuroscience at Caltech, working with Dr. Dean Mobbs. He completed his Ph.D. in 2024 under Dr. Wendy Wood and Dr. Norbert Schwarz at USC. Ian has an M.S. in Marketing Science and Consumer Psychology (2018) from INSEAD and a B.A. from Swarthmore College (2013). His current research focuses on how habits and reward learning impact social media and technology use and the societal and individual consequences of building strong technology habits. His methodological approaches include experimental studies, field studies, archival/behavioral trace data analysis, the use of large language models (LLMs), and fMRI.