The Department of Social and Decision Sciences (SDS) is an interdisciplinary academic department within the

Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences The Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences (Dietrich College) is the liberal and professional studies college and the second-largest academic unit by enrollment (after the Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering) at Ca ...

at Carnegie Mellon University. The Department of Social and Decision Sciences is headquartered in Porter Hall in

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Western Pennsylvania, the second-most populous city in Pennsylva ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

and is led by Department Head Gretchen Chapman. SDS has a world-class reputation for research and education programs in decision-making in

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public p ...

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a Government agency, government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includ ...

, and the behavioral

social sciences Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...

History

The Department of Social Sciences was established in 1976, as part of the

under Dean John Patrick Crecine with approval from

Heinz College The Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy, often called Heinz College, at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is a private graduate college that consists of one of the nation's top-ranked public policy schools— ...

Dean Otto Davis, which previously housed the program. The department was staffed by political scientists, sociologists, and economists from within the Dietrich College, the Heinz College, and the

Tepper School of Business The Tepper School of Business is the business school of Carnegie Mellon University. It is located in the university's campus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. The school offers degrees from the undergraduate through doctoral levels, in addition ...

. In the 1980s, the department was led by Patrick D. Larkey and developed the undergraduate information systems program which became a huge success, eventually being spun off into an independent interdisciplinary program in the Dietrich College. In 1985, Robyn Dawes joined the department and began to re-focus it into its current form and expertise in behavioral decision-making and caused it to be renamed as the Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Carnegie Mellon's Institute for

Politics Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that stud ...

and Strategy was spun off of the department in 2015.

Education

The department runs highly regarded undergraduate

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University o ...

programs in

Decision Science Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...

and

Policy Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an orga ...

and

Management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a Government agency, government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includ ...

and a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

program in Behavioral Economics, Policy, and Organizations as well as minors in Decision Science and Policy and Management. Further, SDS is a partner in various interdisciplinary undergraduate programs such as the

Sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

minor, Environmental Policy program, and the Quantitative Social Science Scholars program. At the

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

level, SDS partners with several other colleges and departments for the Engineering and Technology Innovation Management program. The graduate PhD program allows doctoral students options in Social and Decision Sciences, Behavioral Decision Research (BDR) as well as a joint PhDs in Behavioral Decision Research and Psychology with the Department of Psychology,

Behavioral Marketing Targeted advertising is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either be demographic with a focu ...

and Decision Research and Behavioral Economics with the

, and a joint MD-PhD Medical Scientist Training program with the

University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine is a medical school of the University of Pittsburgh, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The School of Medicine, also known as Pitt Med, is consistently ranked as a "Top Medical School" by '' ...

. SDS also hosts an

executive education Executive education (ExEd or Exec. Ed) refers to academic programs at graduate-level business schools for executives, business leaders and functional managers globally. These programs are generally non-credit and non-degree-granting, but sometim ...

program in behavioral economics. All students are trained in

policy analysis Policy analysis is a technique used in the public administration sub-field of political science to enable civil servants, nonprofit organizations, and others to examine and evaluate the available options to implement the goals of laws and elected ...

and

research methods Research is "creativity, creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular att ...

. SDS is also closely associated with its spin-off programs: the undergraduate

Information Systems An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...

program and the Institute for Politics and Strategy.

Research

The department's primary strength lies in interdisciplinary research, particularly in the intersection of politics and sociology with economics, psychology and human decision making. Statistics, microeconomics, rational

decision theory Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...

and game theory are among the many areas of specialization. SDS faculty are very involved in interdisciplinary research throughout the university, and are drawn from fields as diverse as

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 between ...

sociology Sociology is a social science that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. It uses various methods of empirical investigation an ...

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

management science Management science (or managerial science) is a wide and interdisciplinary study of solving complex problems and making strategic decisions as it pertains to institutions, corporations, governments and other types of organizational entities. It is ...

, and

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

. SDS is affiliated with several labs and centers: CMU Research to Go

*Behavioral Economics and Decision Research Policy Lab *Center for Behavioral and Decision Research *Center for Risk Perception and Communication *Data-Driven Diversity Lab *Dynamic Decision Making Laboratory As part of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research, SDS manages the Data Truck and managed the Carnegie Mellon Research Cafe. The Data Truck is a mobile behavioral science lab. The Research Cafe was a cafe located in

downtown Pittsburgh Downtown Pittsburgh, colloquially referred to as the Golden Triangle, and officially the Central Business District, is the urban downtown center of Pittsburgh. It is located at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River who ...

and was designed to perform behavioral research outside of the student population on the main Carnegie Mellon Pittsburgh campus where the SDS labs are located. The cafe is now closed.

Rankings

In 2006, an

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) is an international society for practitioners in the fields of operations research (O.R.), management science, and analytics. It was established in 1995 with the merger o ...

study gave four of five stars to the graduate program in prescriptive decision making and five stars in descriptive decision making. These two ratings tied the department for first place among decision science programs in the United States with Duke University and the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

Faculty

SDS is home to some of the world's top faculty in the fields of

decision science Decision theory (or the theory of choice; not to be confused with choice theory) is a branch of applied probability theory concerned with the theory of making decisions based on assigning probabilities to various factors and assigning numerical ...

decision support systems A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and ...

, behavioral economics, organizational behavior, risk analysis,

, and complex social systems. Some notable faculty members (both current and past) include Baruch Fischhoff, Paul Fischbeck, Robyn Dawes,

George Loewenstein George Loewenstein (born August 9, 1955) is an American educator and economist. He is the Herbert A. Simon Professor of Economics and Psychology in the Social and Decision Sciences Department at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the C ...

, Cleotilde Gonzalez,

Jennifer Lerner Jennifer S. Lerner is an American experimental social psychologist known for her research in emotion and decision theory. She is the first psychologist at the Harvard Kennedy School to receive tenure. At Harvard, her titles include Professor of P ...

Kathleen Carley Kathleen M. Carley is an American social scientist specializing in dynamic network analysis. She is a professor in the School of Computer Science in the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University and also holds appointments ...

David Krackhardt David Krackhardt is Professor of Organizations at Heinz College and the Tepper School of Business, with courtesy appointments in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences (Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences) and the Machine Le ...

, Steven Klepper, Linda C. Babcock, Lee Branstetter,

David A. Hounshell David Allen Hounshell (born 1950) is an American academic. He is the David M. Roderick Professor of Technology and Social Change in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Department of History, and the Department of Engineering and Publ ...

, William Keech, John H. Miller, Mark Kamlet, Roberto Weber,

Herbert A. Simon Herbert Alexander Simon (June 15, 1916 – February 9, 2001) was an American political scientist, with a Ph.D. in political science, whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary ...

, Jendayi Frazer, Kiron Skinner,

Sara Kiesler Sara Beth (Greene) Kiesler is the Hillman Professor Emerita of Computer Science and Human Computer Interaction in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. She is also a program director in the Directorate for Soci ...

, John Patrick Crecine, Cristina Bicchieri,

Joseph Born Kadane Joseph "Jay" Born Kadane (born January 10, 1941) is the Leonard J. Savage University Professor of Statistics, Emeritus in the Department of Statistics and Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. Kadane is one of the early p ...

Daniel M. Oppenheimer Daniel M. Oppenheimer is a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University in the Social and Decision Sciences, Department of Social and Decision Sciences. Previously, he was a professor at the UCLA UCLA Anderson School of Management, Ander ...

, Patrick D. Larkey, and Otto Davis. The current faculty consists of 20 full-time members with additional associated and adjunct faculty, staff, and fellows. In addition the department works closely with the departments of Engineering and Public Policy, Psychology, History, and Statistics and Data Science, as well as the

, and the undergraduate Information Systems program. Many SDS faculty have joint appointments in these departments.

References

External links

*
Undergraduate programs and courses
{{coord, 40.441332, -79.944617, type:edu_globe:earth_region:US-PA, display=title Schools and departments of Carnegie Mellon Economics schools Educational institutions established in 1976 Decision theory 1976 establishments in Pennsylvania