Boaz Keysar, PhD

Boaz Keysar conducts research about how people communicate, negotiate and make decisions. His research interests include communication and language use; metaphors, idioms and other figures of speech; thinking, reasoning and problem solving; and judgment and decision making. Many of his discoveries reveal systematic reasons for miscommunication and misunderstandings. For example, his research shows that people overestimate their ability to communicate accurately, and counter to what people tend to think, we miscommunicate even more with those who are more familiar to us.

Professor Keysar publishes his work in leading journals such as Psychological Science and Psychological Review, and his honors and awards include a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, major federal research grants from National Institute of Health, National Science Foundation and a Fulbright Scholarship. 

He is also lab director of The Multilingualism and Decision-Making Lab at UChicago, which is dedicated to understanding the relationship between thinking, decision making, negotiation, and communication. The lab’s most recent research focuses on how bilingualism affects thinking and decision making.