Faculty of Arts
Research project description
We are looking for ambitious graduate students to conduct projects within the Wise Judgment Consortium which brings together an international team of researchers to study how culture shapes the way we make decisions. Our work is highly interdisciplinary, combining psychology, natural language processing (including Large Language Models), computational modelling, and psychometrics to understand the complex ways cultural, ecological, and situational factors influence everyday decision-making.
In a world where cultural and moral conflicts are unavoidable, it is crucial to understand how people from diverse backgrounds navigate these challenges. Our goal is to develop a culturally inclusive model of decision-making—one that moves beyond Western-centric perspectives and reflects the variety of ways people balance moral values, interpersonal dynamics, and personal preferences.
Our research follows a three-step process. We begin by identifying the most difficult decisions people in different parts of the world are facing—moral dilemmas, personal choices, and interpersonal conflicts that are most relevant across different cultures. This gave us insight into the contexts where wisdom is most needed. Now, we collect insights from people around the world on the strategies they see as “wise” in these situations. Using behavioural experiments, surveys and interviews, we investigate how different cultures define, value, and apply wisdom in decision-making. Finally, we build computational models to understand why certain strategies are effective in specific cultural contexts and how they can be adapted across settings. These models help us test predictions and design practical tools for improving decision-making globally.
By combining perspectives from psychology, computational sciences, and cultural research, the Wise Judgment Consortium aims to transform how wisdom is studied and applied—contributing to both theory and practice on a worldwide scale.
Opportunities for prospective graduate students concern both experimental and psychometric research, cross-cultural decision sciences, as well as computational social science (incl. LLMs).
Fields of research
- Social psychology
- Cultural psychology
- Decision sciences
- Large Language Models (LLM) & Natural Language Processing (NLP)
- Computational modelling & agent-based modelling
Qualifications and ideal student profile
Prospective graduate student researchers must meet or exceed the minimum admission requirements for the programs connected to this opportunity. Visit the program pages using the links on this page to learn more about minimum admission requirements. In addition to minimum requirements, the research supervisor is looking for the following qualifications and student profile.
- Workable knowledge of cultural psychology, cross-cultural research, social psychology, or related fields
- Background in machine learning and/or artificial intelligence
- Proficiency in programming languages such as Python or R
- Strong analytical and quantitative skills
- Interest in interdisciplinary research that bridges social science and computational methods
- Ability to work collaboratively in an international research team
- Excellent communication skills, both written and verbal
- Students who are motivated by both theoretical contributions and practical applications of research will be especially well-suited for this project
Faculty researcher and supervisor
- Igor Grossmann
Professor, Department of Psychology
View faculty profile →
Wise Judgement Consortium website →
Graduate programs connected to this project
Important dates
Cross-cultural decision sciences, AI psychometrics, and natural language processing is accepting expressions of interest for intake in the fall 2026 and fall 2027 terms.