Ben Heller

Ben Heller is the Lab Manager at the DICE Lab at Reichman University, and a Ph.D. candidate in Psychology with a B.A. in Neuroscience and an M.A. in Social Psychology. His research focuses on ethical judgment, decision-making, and the cognitive processes behind moral dilemmas. Ben has published in journals such as Frontiers in Psychology and Review of Managerial Science. His work bridges social psychology and entrepreneurship, offering insights into innovation, creativity, and decision-making. Other than that, his topics of interest are evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind.

Doctoral Research:

Ben is interested in the psychological processes which determine what makes people behave more or less unethically, and how we can use this understanding to design beneficial decision-making environments. Specifically he is interested in how people use randomness to justify their unethical behaviors. In essence, there are many dishonest and cheating behaviors whose "rewards" are uncertain, and depend on factors other than the individual's decision and behavior. Research on ethical JDM has shown that most people cheat most of the time when given the chance, but only to the extent that they can preserve their moral self-image. One way people do this is by finding justifications for their cheating behavior, by, for example, claiming that their cheating is altruistic, or that others cheat too "so why shouldn't they?". Ben's thesis is that the randomness of payoffs ("rewards") for cheating can be used to justify cheating behavior, because it makes the individual's decision to cheat only partially responsible for their receiving the payoff. If this thesis is true, it can be used to design more optimal decision-making environments in private and public applications, services, and environments.