Dr. Rima-Maria Rahal

Senior Research Fellow

Research Focus

My research focuses on decision making. I am interested in how decisions in social and moral dilemmas, as well as in legal and economic contexts are formed. My work focuses on the cognitive and affective processes underlying the choices we make in such settings, using unobtrusive measurement techniques such as eye-tracking and thermal imaging.

Publications

Articles in Peer-reviewed Journals

Luebber, F., Krach, S., Martinez Mateo, M., Paulus, F. M., Rademacher, L., Rahal, R.-M., & Spech, J. (accepted). Rethink Funding: Putting the Lottery First. Nature Human Behaviour.

Huber, C., Dreber, A., Huber, J., Johannesson, M., Kirchler, M., Weitzel, U., Abellán, M., Adayeva, X., Ay, F.C., Barron, K., Berry, Z., Bönte, W., Brütt, K., Bulutay, M., Campos-Mercade, P., Cardella, E., Claassen M., Cornelissen, G., Dawson, I., ... Holzmeister, F. (2023). Competition and Moral Behavior: A Meta-analysis of 45 Crowd-sourced Experimental Designs. PNAS, 120(23), e2215572120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2215572120

Rahal, R.-M., Fiedler, S., Adetula, A., Berntsson R.P.-A., Dirnagl, U., Feld, G.B., Fiebach, C.J., Himi, S.A., Horner, A.J., Lonsdorf, T.B., Schönbrodt, F., Silan, M.A.A., Wenzler, M. & Azvedo, F. (2023). Quality Research Needs Good Working Conditions. Nature Human Behaviour, 7, 164-167. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01508-2

Buchanan, E. M., Lewis, S., Paris, B., Forscher, P.S., Pavlacic, J.M., Beshears., J.E., Gourdon- Kanhukamwe, A., Mallik, P., Silan, M.A.A., Miller, J.K., Ijzerman, H., Beaudry, J.L., Suchow, J., Chartier, C.R., Todsen, A.L., Levitan, C., Azevdo, F., Legate, N., Wang, K.,... Primbs, M.A. (2023). PSACR: The Psychological Science Accelerator’s COVID-19 Rapid-Response Dataset. Scientific Data. https://osf.io/byqha

Rahal, R.-M., Hamann, H., Brohmer, H. & Pethig, F. (2022). Sharing the Recipe: Reproducibility and Replicability in Research Across Disciplines. Research Ideas and Outcomes. https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.8.e89980

Delios, A., Clemente, E., Wu, T., Tan, H., Wang, Y., Gordon, M., Viganola, D., Chen, Z., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Pfeiffer, T., Generalizability Tests Forecasting Collaboration, & Uhlmann, E.L. (2022). Examining the Context Sensitivity of Research Findings from Archival Data. PNAS, 199(30e2120377119). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120377119 [Member of forecasting collaboration]

Dorison, C.A., Coles, N.A., Heller, B.H., Rothman, A.J., Kawachi, I.I., Wang, K., Rees, V.W., Gill, B.P., Gibbs, N., Ebersole, C.R., Vally, Z., Tajchman, Z., Zsido, A.N., Zrimsek, M., Chen, Z., Ziano, I., Gialitaki, Z., Ceary, C.D., Jang, Y., ..., Coles, N.A. (2022). In COVID-19 Health Messaging, Loss Framing Increases Anxiety with Little-to-no concomitant Benefits: Experimen tal Evidence from 84 Countries. Affective Science. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/sevkf

Psychological Science Accelerator Self-Determination Theory Collaboration. (2022). A Global Experiment on Motivating Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic. PNAS, 199(22)e2111091119. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2111091119

Rahal, R.-M., & Fiedler, S. (2022). Cognitive and Affective Processes of Prosociality. Cur- rent Opinion in Psychology, 44, 309-314. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.10.007

Wanders, F., Homan, A.C., van Vianen, A.E.M., Rahal, R.-M., & van Kleef, G.A. (2021). How Norm Violators Rise and Fall in the Eyes of Others: The Role of Sanctions. PLOS ONE, 16(7), e0254574. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0254574

Tierney, W., Hardy, J. H., III., Ebersole, C., Leavitt, K., Viganola, D., Clemente, E., Gor- don,M., Dreber, A.A., Johannesson, M., Pfeiffer, T., Hiring Decisions Forecasting Collaboration, & Uhlmann, E. L. (2021). Creative Destruction in Science Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 161, 291-309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.07.002 [Member of forecasting collaboration]

Tierney, W., Hardy, J.H., III., Ebersole, C., Viganola, D., Clemente, E., Gordon, M., Hoogeveen, S., Have, J., Dreber, A., Johannesson, M., Pfeiffer, T., Huang, J.L., Vaughn, L.A., DeMarree, K., Igou, E.R., Chapman, H., Gantman, A., Wylie, J., Storbeck, J., ... Uhlmann, E.L. (2021). A Creative Destruction Approach to Replication: Implicit Work and Sex Morality across Cultures. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 93, 104060. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.104060[Member of forecasting collaboration]

Wang, K., Goldenberg, A., Dorison, C., Miller, J. K., PhD, Uusberg, A., Lerner, J. S., … & Noone, C. (2021). A Multi-Country Test of Brief Reappraisal Interventions on Emotions during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Nature Human Behaviour, 5, 1089-1110. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01173-x

Rahal, R.-M., Fiedler, S., & De Dreu, C.K.W. (2020). Prosocial Preferences Condition De- cision Effort and Ingroup Biased Generosity in Intergroup Decision-Making. Scientific Re- ports, 10(10132). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-64592-2

Rahal, R.-M., & Fiedler, S. (2019). Understanding Cognitive and Affective Mechanisms in Social Psychology through Eye-tracking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103842

Rahal, R.-M. (2018). The Fire Burns Within: Individual Motivations for Self-Sacrifice. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X18001851

Bouwmeester, S., Verkoeijen, P. P. J. L., Aczel, B., Barbosa, F., Bègue, L., Brañas-Garza, P., Chmura, T.G.H., Cornelissen, G., Døssing, F.S., Espín, A.M., Evans, A.M., Ferreira-Santos, F., Fiedler, S., Flegr, J., Ghaffari, M., Glöckner, A., Goeschl, T., Guo, L., Hauser, O.P.,... Wollbrant, C. E. (2017). Registered Replication Report: Rand, Greene, and Nowak (2012). Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 12(3), 527– 542. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691617693624

Open Science Collaboration (2015). Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science. Science, 349(6251). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aac4716

Other Articles

Rahal, R.-M., & Heycke, T. (2020). Hoarding in science, no thanks. Openness and transparency in crisis mode and beyond. MetaArXiv.

Steinhardt, I., Fischer, C., Heimstädt, M., Hirsbrunner, S. D., Ikiz-Akıncı, D., Kressin, L., … Rahal, R.-M. … & Wünsche, H. (2020). Das Öffnen und Teilen von Daten qualitativer Forschung: eine Handreichung. (Opening up and sharing data from qualitative research: A primer) Weizenbaum Series, 6.

Rahal, R.-M., & Havemann, J. (2019). Science in Crisis. Is Open Science the Solution? MetaArXiv.

Working Papers

Rahal, R.-M., Hoeft, L., & Fiedler, S., Eyes on Morals: Investigating the Cognitive Processes underlying Moral Decision-Making via Eye-Tracking.

Engel, C., & Rahal, R.-M. (2020). What the Judge Argues is Not What the Judge Thinks - Eye Tracking Evidence about the Normative Weight of Conflicting Concerns in a Torts Case, MPI Discussion Paper 2020/3.

Work in Progress

Rahal, R.-M., Fiedler, S. & De Dreu, C.K.W., Staying Blind to Stay Fair: Inequality-Averse Decision-Makers Avoid Group Membership Information and Ingroup Favoritism

Rahal, R.-M., Siebers, T., Sleegers, W. W. A., & van Beest, I. Your Lies Leave Me Cold: Thermal Imaging Reveals Decreased Finger Temperatures When Observing Lies – in preparation.

Rahal, R.-M., & van Beest, I., Warm Glow or Guilt Aversion? Investigating Affective Drivers of Giving via Thermal Imaging

Teaching

  • Social Cognition
  • Relationship between Psychology and Economics
  • Experimental Psychology
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