Rate My Professor Eldad Yechiam

Eldad Yechiam is a professor whose work centers on psychology, particularly cognitive psychology and behavioral decision making. He earned his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and Human Factors Engineering from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology in 2003, an M.Sc. in Industrial Psychology from the same institution in 2000 (summa cum laude), and a B.A. in Psychology and Comparative Literature from Bar-Ilan University in 1994 (magna cum laude). After completing his doctorate, Yechiam served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Psychology Department at Indiana University, Bloomington from 2003 to 2005. He joined the Technion's Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences (formerly Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management) in 2005 as a Senior Lecturer, advanced to Associate Professor in 2010, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2018.

Professor Yechiam's research specializations include decision making under uncertainty, learning from experience, behavioral economics, individual differences in decision strategies, and cognitive enhancement techniques. His studies examine how cognitive asymmetries emerge from varying incentive structures, the impact of personal experience on responses to rare events such as terrorist attacks, and the application of computational models to neuropsychological decision deficits. Key publications encompass "Comparison of basic assumptions embedded in learning models for experience-based decision-making" (Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2005), "The effect of foregone payoffs on underweighting small probability events" (Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2006), "Using cognitive models to map relations between neuropsychological disorders and human decision making deficits" (Psychological Science, 2005), "The role of personal experience in contributing to different patterns of response to rare terrorist attacks" (Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2005), and more recent works like "Loss aversion is not robust: A re-meta-analysis." Yechiam has earned major awards including the Wolf Foundation Award for Ph.D. candidates (2001), Technion President’s Excellent Lecturer Award (2007 and 2012), Salomon S. Mani Award for Excellence in Teaching (2010), Cognitive Science Society Computational Modeling Prize in Applied Cognition (2010), Henri Taub Prize for Excellence in Research (2016), and the Harry Lebensfeld Chair in Science (2021). He holds prominent appointments such as Dean of the Faculty of Data and Decision Sciences, President of the European Association for Decision Making (2023–present), Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Economic Psychology (2019–present), and member of multiple editorial boards including Judgment and Decision Making and Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. His contributions have advanced the understanding of reinforcement learning mechanisms and risk perception in behavioral science.