Graduate Students

Steve is a sixth-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 fifth-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.

Irem is a second year PhD student in social psychology working with Dr. Norbert Schwarz and Dr. Daphna Oyserman. She investigates how people make meaning from metacognitive and social cues like fluency, effort, and message framing.

Yalda is a fourth-year PhD student working with Dr. Daphna Oyserman. She studies how human values change across time and cultures and how large language models (LLMs) might influence these changes. She uses a mix of survey studies, text analysis, agent-based modeling, and computational methods to investigate how human values change and how technology interacts with these processes, addressing questions with both theoretical implications for social psychology and practical implications for people and societies. More recently, her work has taken a human-centered approach to LLMs, focusing on their alignment with human values, the sociotechnical issues surrounding AI, and whether these models can serve users from diverse cultural and social backgrounds. She is also interested in how LLMs themselves may become a source of cultural and societal change.

Drew received his PhD in social psychology in 2026. His work with Dr. Norbert Schwarz investigates the situational factors that influence judgement and decision making, humor, and how we use our feelings as information to guide our judgments. Drew is now a lecturer at University of Southern California.

Kevin received his PhD in social psychology in 2025. His work with Dr. Daphna Oyserman focused on (1) how time perception influences motivation, goal pursuit, and decision-making, and (2) how people’s interpretations of difficulty shape goal perseverance and disengagement. He is currently a researcher at Google.

Ony received his PhD in Social Psychology in 2026. His work with Daphna Oyserman focused on identity and motivation. He is currently a Data Manager at Harder+Company.

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.

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.

Amabel received her PhD in Social Psychology in 2025. Her work with Daphna Oyserman focused on how culture and social identity shape reasoning, decision-making, and information processing in ambiguous contexts. She is currently a research advisor at Behavioural Insights Team (BIT).