Nicholas Owsley

PhD Candidate · University of Chicago Booth School of Business

I work at the intersection of behavioral economics, judgment and decision-making, and organizational behavior. My research uses controlled lab experiments, field experiments, and large administrative datasets to study the psychological underpinnings of discrimination and motivation in organizational contexts.

In my discrimination research, I focus on how beliefs about one's social environment — rather than direct attitudes toward outgroup members — shape discriminatory behavior, and how organizational signals and interventions can disrupt those patterns. In my motivation research, I examine how people respond to crossing significant thresholds — goals, reference points, and temporal fresh starts — and the implications for effort and performance.

Before joining Booth, I worked at the Busara Center for Behavioral Economics in Nairobi, conducting applied behavioral research across the Global South, and completed my undergraduate and master's degrees at the University of Cape Town, where I worked with the Research Unit in Behavioral Economics and Neuroeconomics (RUBEN).