Mirta Galesic is a Croatian American psychologist who is the Cowan Chair in Human Social Dynamics at the

Santa Fe Institute The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, inclu ...

. She serves as a member of the faculty at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna.

Early life and education

Galesic was born in

Croatia , image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg , image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg , anthem = "Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland") , image_map = , map_caption = , capit ...

. She was an undergraduate student at the

University of Zagreb The University of Zagreb ( hr, Sveučilište u Zagrebu, ; la, Universitas Studiorum Zagrabiensis) is the largest Croatian university and the oldest continuously operating university in the area covering Central Europe south of Vienna and all of ...

, where she studied psychology. She moved to the theory of marketing, and completed a master's degree. Galesic earned a doctorate in psychology at the

in 2004. In 2004, Galesic left Croatia and joined the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, where she studied survey methodology. After completing her graduate studies, Galesic moved to the

University of Maryland, College Park The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...

. She joined the

Max Planck Institute for Human Development The Max-Planck-Institute for Human Development (Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung) is an internationally renowned social science research organization. Located in Berlin, it was initiated in 1961 and officially began operations in 1963 ...

as a postdoctoral research fellow.

Research and career

Galesic was appointed to the faculty at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in 2008. She remained in Berlin until 2015, when she was made Professor at the

. Galesic investigates how cognitive mechanisms interact with their external environments to produce complex phenomena. She is interested in how cognitive bias in social judgements emerge. Additionally, Galesic has studied how people understand and process uncertainty, as well as how they make decisions. She has investigated how researchers can obtain reliable data from social networks. She calls her approach "human social sensing", that is, asking people to gather information on others in their social networks. She studied how Twitter users convey their political opinions, and found that in groups of similar thinking people, Twitter uses were more likely to overtly share their opinions, whilst when they were in mixed groups they were likely to use covert messaging. Alongside her work on securing accurate information from social media, Galesic studied hate and counterspeech on Twitter.

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Galesic, Mirta Living people University of Zagreb alumni University of Michigan alumni University of Maryland, College Park alumni Santa Fe Institute people Croatian emigrants to the United States 21st-century American psychologists Year of birth missing (living people)