Associate Professor of Practice in Behavioral and Decision Sciences
Dr. Eugen Dimant is an Associate Professor of Practice in Behavioral and Decision Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. He is also a fellow in both the Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program and the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania, a collaborator at the Behavior Change for Good Initiative (BCFG) at Wharton, and a Network Fellow at CESifo. From 2022 to 2023, he was also part of the former White House Behavioral Science Team (now OES) and worked on high-impact RCTs related to the opioid epidemic.
Dr. Dimant’s research lies at the intersection of behavioral economics, sociology, and political psychology. He studies how social norms emerge, how they are enforced or eroded, and how norm disagreement and polarization influence what people view as acceptable and how these perceptions shape behavior. His recent work develops and applies measures of norm pluralism and perceived polarization, examining how polarization shapes social preferences and cooperation.
A second strand of Dr. Dimant’s work examines institutions and large-scale social outcomes, including corruption, crime, terrorism, and migration, often combining experimental tools with applied empirical methods. His interest in migration is deeply personal. Having emigrated from Moldova as a refugee following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this experience continues to shape the questions he asks about identity, institutions, and social cohesion.
More information about Dr. Dimant’s work can be found on his research website.
