Daniel M. Oppenheimer is a professor of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technolog ...

in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Previously, he was a professor at the

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

Anderson School of Management. From 2004 to 2012, he worked at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

's Department of Psychology. Primarily interested in

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

, he researches causal discounting, charitable giving, perceptual fluency, and people's perceptions of

randomness In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual ran ...

. He won the 2006

Ig Nobel Prize The Ig Nobel Prize ( ) is a satiric prize awarded annually since 1991 to celebrate ten unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. Its aim is to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The name o ...

in Literature for his paper "Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using Long Words Needlessly", which argues that simple writing makes authors appear more intelligent than complex writing. In 2012, he co-authored a book with political scientist Mike Edwards on political psychology and democracy, ''Democracy Despite Itself: Why A System That Shouldn't Work at All Works So Well''. Oppenheimer earned his BA at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universitie ...

and his MA and PhD from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

Books

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Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oppenheimer, Daniel M Living people Princeton University faculty Carnegie Mellon University faculty Rice University alumni Stanford University alumni 21st-century American psychologists Year of birth missing (living people)