Thomas Gilovich

Thomas Gilovich is a leading American psychologist whose work has profoundly shaped how scholars and the public understand human judgment, decision making, and reasoning. He is the Irene Blecker Rosenfeld Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and co‑director of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research, where he studies how people evaluate information in everyday and professional life, how they draw conclusions, and how emotional states influence and result from those judgments. Gilovich’s research explores why people sometimes make faulty judgments, form unwarranted beliefs, or embark on counterproductive courses of action, with interests ranging from gamblers’ selective memory to experiential versus material satisfaction.

Gilovich earned his B.A. in psychology from the University of California at Santa Barbara and his Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University, where he completed his dissertation on biased evaluation and persistence in gambling. He is widely recognized as an award‑winning teacher and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received honors such as the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s Donald T. Campbell Award for distinguished research achievement.

Gilovich is the author of several influential books that bring insights from behavioral science to general audiences, including “How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life,” which examines common cognitive biases and the limits of human reasoning, and “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes—and How to Correct Them” (co‑authored with Gary Belsky). His work continues to influence research and teaching in psychology, behavioral economics, and decision science.