Carnegie Mellon University

Gretchen Chapman

Social and Decision Sciences  ›  Chapman Research Group  ›  Gretchen Chapman

Bio

Gretchen Chapman has been a Professor in Social & Decision Sciences since 2017. Prior to joining the faculty at CMU, Dr. Chapman was a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University where she served as Department Chair of Psychology and Acting Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Science.  She is the recipient of an APA early career award and a NJ Psychological Association Distinguished Research Award and is a fellow of APA and APS.  She is a former senior editor at Psychological Science, a past president of the Society for Judgment & Decision Making, the author of  more than 100 journal articles, and the recipient of 30 years of continuous external funding.

Research Overview

Dr. Chapman’s research goal is to illuminate the psychological processes underlying decision making and to harness these findings in the design of theoretically-motivated, policy-relevant interventions to facilitate healthy and prosocial behavior such as vaccination and blood donation.  Her research combines the fields of judgment and decision making and health psychology.  Using both laboratory and field experiments, she tests behavioral interventions, simultaneously exploring the theoretical mechanisms of decision making and also yielding policy insights into methods for improving health behavior and health outcomes. Projects are motivated by the goal to produce policy recommendations for improving health and welfare by encouraging vaccination, healthy eating, physical activity, or prosocial behavior such as organ donation.  In order to find interventions that work and to understand the contexts in which they are effective, we need to understand the basic decision processes underlying these behaviors using studies that test specific theoretical mechanisms that give rise to behavior change.  Although laboratory studies and questionnaires are often the settings for homing in on mechanism, applied contexts and field studies can also provide opportune testbeds for hypotheses about fundamental principles of decision making in addition to providing real world relevance. Read on to learn about several major research projects.

1. Vaccination Decisions

My research examines factors associated with the decision to vaccinate. In addition to the perceived safety and efficacy of the vaccine and perceived risk of infection, vaccination decisions are also driven by emotions such as anticipated regret. Different types of motives govern the decisions of different groups of potential vaccinators, which has implications for the design of interventions to encourage vaccination.

  1. Butler, A.E. & Chapman, G.B. (2025). Lay perceptions of vaccine efficacy. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition 14, 255-274. https://doi.org/10.1037/mac0000197
  2. Golos, A.M., Buttenheim, A.M., Ritter, A. & Chapman, G.B. (2023). Changes in COVID-19 vaccine uptake and employee separation among long term care workers following the announcement of an employer vaccination mandate. Health Affairs, 42(8), 1140-1146.
  3. Chapman, G.B. and Coups, E.J. (1999). Predictors of Influenza Vaccine Acceptance Among Healthy Adults. Preventive Medicine, 29(4), 249-262. PMID: 10547050
  4. Chapman, G.B., & Coups, E.J. (2006). Emotions and Preventive Health Behavior: Worry, Regret, and Influenza Vaccination. Health Psychology, 25(1), 82-90. PMID: 16448301
  5. Betsch, C, Böhm, R., & Chapman, G.B. (2015). Interventions to Counter Vaccine Hesitancy – Using Behavioral Insights to Increase Vaccination Policy Effectiveness. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2(1), 61-73.
  6. Brewer, N. T., Chapman, G. B., Rothman, A. J., Leask, J., & Kempe, A. (2017). Understanding and Increasing Vaccination Behaviors: Putting Psychology into Action. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 18(3), 149-207. PMID: 29611455


2. The Default Effect in Vaccination Behavior

Patients who are pre-scheduled for a flu shot appointment (which they can cancel) are more likely to vaccinate than are patients who are not scheduled (but who can book an appointment). Similarly, a message that a vaccine “has been reserved for you” increases uptake.

  1. Buttenheim, A., Milkman, K.L., Duckworth, A., Gromet, D.M., Patel, M.S., & Chapman, G.B. (2022). “Effects of ‘Ownership’ Text Messaging Wording and Reminders on Receipt of an Influenza Vaccination: A Randomized Trial.” JAMA Network Open, 5(2), e2143388-e2143388. PMID: 35175346
  2. Chapman, G.B., Li, M., Colby, H., & Yoon, H. (2010). “Opting in Versus Opting Out of Influenza Vaccination.” JAMA, 304(1), 43-44. PMID: 20606147
  3. Lehmann, B.A., Chapman, G.B., Franssen, F.M.E., Kok, G., & Ruiter, R.A.C. (2016). “Changing the Default to Promote Influenza Vaccination Among Health Care Workers.” Vaccine, 34(11), 1389-1392. PMID: 26851734
  4. Chapman, G.B., Li, M., Leventhal, H., & Leventhal, E.A. (2016). “Default Clinic Appointments Promote Influenza Vaccination Uptake Without a Displacement Effect.” Behavioral Science & Policy, 2(Jun), 3-12. PMID: 36714456

3. Organ Donation Decisions

Decision principles can address puzzles in transplantation medicine. Behavioral science principles including misaligned incentives can provide an explanation for high donor discard. Because regulator bodies evaluate each center’s transplant success rate, centers may be incentivized to adopt strategies that may enhance transplant success rate – such as selectively accepting only high quality donor organs and declining the rest – despite the fact that doing say may increase wait list time. Other research examines explanations for why pediatric organ donation rates are low and vary geographically.

  1. Butler, A.E. & Chapman, G.B. (2021). “Don’t Throw Your Heart Away: Increasing Transparency of Donor Utilization Practices on Transplant Center Report Cards Alters How Center Performance is Evaluated.” Medical Decision Making, 42(3), 341-351. DOI: 10.1177/0272989X211038941. PMID: 34605713
  2. Butler, A., Chapman, G.B., Johnson, J., Amodeo, A., Böhmer, J., Camino, M., Davies, R., Dipchand, A., Godown, J., Miera, O., Pérez-Blanco, A., Rosenthal, D., Zangwill, S. Kirk, R. (2020). “Part VII: Behavioral Economics: A Framework for Donor Organ Decision-Making in Pediatric Heart Transplantation.” Pediatric Transplantation, 24(Jan), e13655. DOI: 10.1111/petr.13655. PMID: 31985140
  3. Chapman, G.B., Lanyon, M., Godown, J., and Lebovitz, D. (2025). Organ procurement organization donation requestors describe barriers to pediatric organ donation. Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, 10-1097. PMID: 40178343
  4. Chapman, G.B., Lebovitz, D.J., Butler, A.E., & Godown, J. (2023). “Perceptions of Pediatric Deceased Donor Consent: A Survey of Organ Procurement Organizations.” Pediatric Transplantation, 27(4), e14514. DOI: 10.1111/petr.14514. PMID: 36945079
  5. Godown, J., Butler, A.E., Lebovitz, D. & Chapman, G.B. (2021). “Predictors of Pediatric Deceased Organ Donation and Variability Across Organ Procurement Organizations.” Pediatrics, 147(6), e2020009506. DOI: 1542/peds.2020-009506. PMID: 33963074

4. Dietary Decisions

Variations in how foods are presented and described can influence which foods are selected and how much they are enjoyed. Environmental cues to encourage health food choices, such as health defaults, can have limited effects when decision makers select environments that lack those cues.

  1. Colby, H., Li, M., & Chapman, G.B. (2020). Dodging dietary defaults: Choosing away from healthy nudges. OBHDP, 161, 50-60. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.10.001
  2. Policastro, P., Harris, C., & Chapman, G. (2019). Tasting with your eyes: Sensory description substitutes for portion size. Appetite, 139, 42-49. DOI: 10.1016/j.appet.2019.04.010. PMID: 30995490
  3. Policastro, P., Palm, T., Schwartz, J.A., & Chapman, G.B. (2017). Targeted calorie message promotes healthy beverage consumption better than charity incentive. Obesity, 25(8), 1428-1434. DOI: 10.1002/oby.21885. PMID: 28646548
  4. Policastro, P., Smith, Z., & Chapman, G.B. (2015). Put the healthy item first: Order of ingredient listing influences consumer selection. Journal of Health Psychology. 22, 853-863. DOI: 10.1177/1359105315617328. PMID: 26672109


5. Allocation of Scarce Resources

Decisions about how to allocate scarce life-saving resources (such as vaccines or transplant organs) are influenced by subtle psychological factors. Whether the decision is framed as gains (saving lives) or losses (preventing deaths) influences whether decision makers will allocate so as to maximize life-years gained or so as to prioritize young victims. Whether the beneficiaries are presented in one unified group or grouped according to their anticipated outcome influences whether decision makers will focus on efficiency or fairness.

  1. Li, M., Vietri, J., Galvani, A., Medlock, J., & Chapman, G.B. (2010). “How Lay People Value Life.” Psychological Science, 21(2), 263-167. PMID: 20424038

  2. Colby, H., DeWitt, J., & Chapman, G.B. (2015). “Grouping Promotes Equality: The Effect of Recipient Grouping on Allocation of Limited Medical Resources.” Psychological Science, 26(7), 1084-1089. PMID: 26078294



6. Blind Review

Blinded review is often proposed as a solution to potential inequities in merit-based evaluations.  This study evaluated the equity of blinded and unblinded review in a high-stakes field experiment during peer-review of submissions for an academic conference. Both single-blind and double-blind review has modest reliability and some validity in terms of predicting later outcomes (e.g., later publication of the paper). Single-blind reviews favored senior coauthors and disfavored Asian (versus White) authors more than double-blind review. Double-blind reviews slightly favored male authors more than single-blind reviews. 

  1. Pleskac, T., Kyung, E., Chapman, G.B., & Urminsky, O. (in press). Comparison of single- and double-blind review of scientific abstracts for a high stakes international conference. Management Science. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4709572

Publications

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