Welcome to the Department of Social and Decision Sciences
The Department of Social and Decision Sciences (SDS) is an interdisciplinary department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). It offers undergraduate and graduate programs that combine social science research with practical decision-making skills for roles in the public and private sectors.
Students study how people and organizations make decisions. They apply these insights in areas such as public policy, business, and the information economy.
Mission
The mission of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences is to provide intellectual leadership in the social sciences, brought about by the power of a transdisciplinary environment for research and learning, for teaching and training, and for solving social problems.
In the News
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into healthcare, SDS Professor Gretchen Chapman examines what a recent chatbot lawsuit reveals about the psychology of medical trust.
How do statistics, psychology, and decision making shape the way we think about sports betting? SDS faculty member Linda Moya is helping CMU students explore the answers in a first-of-its-kind course featured by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
SDS offers an array of undergraduate majors, including:
- BS in Behavioral Economics
- BS in Decision Science
- BS in Policy & Management
The majors leverage SDS’s departmental core that includes courses in:
- decision analysis
- empirical research,
- organizations
- policy analysis
- applied psychology
SDS also offers four minors in Behavioral Economics, Decision Science, Policy & Management and Sociology.
Graduate study within SDS offers eight areas of focus:
- Behavioral Decision Research
- Cognitive Decision Science
- Social and Decision Sciences
- Behavioral Marketing and Decision Research (Joint with the Tepper School of Business)
- Behavioral Economics (Joint with the Tepper School of Business)
- Psychology and Behavioral Decision Research (Joint with the Department of Psychology)
- Medical Scientist Training Program MD-PhD (Joint with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine)
- Autonomous and Human Decision Making (joint with the Machine Learning Department in the School of Computer Science)