Carnegie Mellon University

Welcome to the Department of Social and Decision Sciences

The Department of Social and Decision Sciences (SDS) is an interdisciplinary department that offers undergraduate and graduate programs that combine studies in the social sciences with the practical skills needed to excel in key decision making roles in the public and private sectors.

Students learn how to combine intellectual ideals with the realities of human and organizational behavior and to apply these lessons across a wide variety of endeavors, ranging from government service to leadership positions in the information economy.

Mission

The mission of the Department of Social and Decision Sciences is to provide intellectual leadership in the social sciences, brought about by the power of a transdisciplinary environment for research and learning, for teaching and training, and for solving social problems.

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In the News

John Conlon headshot
Dietrich College Faculty Spotlight: John Conlon
a robot and man playing cards
SDS's Cleotilde Gonzalez and Kevin Jarbo, alongside HCI’s Geoff Kaufman, developed Moments@Work, an innovative diversity training game. This game uses AI-powered "personality" bots to simulate workplace interactions, showing how unconscious bias can spread and influence behavior in social dynamics.
A new paper published in the journal Science Advances by assistant professor Simon Cullen and professor Danny Oppenheimer suggests that the key to boosting college students’ attendance and performance isn’t stricter rules, but more freedom.
Camille Chandler
Camille Chandler, a junior in Psychology and Decision Science, was awarded the prestigious Beinecke Scholarship! She is only the third CMU student to receive this highly competitive honor since the scholarship began in 1975.

Students are afforded the opportunity to engage in world-class hands-on research through five departmental research centers:

AI Institute for Societal Decision Making
Center for Behavioral and Decision Research
Center for Risk Perception and Communication
Data-Driven Diversity Lab
Dynamic Decision Making Laboratory

SDS offers an array of undergraduate majors, including:

  • BS in Behavioral Economics
  • BS in Decision Science
  • BS in Policy & Management

The majors leverage SDS’s departmental core that includes courses in decision analysis, empirical research, organizations, policy analysis and applied psychology .

SDS also offers four minors in Behavioral Economics, Decision Science, Policy & Management and Sociology

Graduate study within SDS offers eight areas of focus:

  • Behavioral Decision Research
  • Cognitive Decision Science
  • Social and Decision Sciences
  • Behavioral Marketing and Decision Research (Joint with the Tepper School of Business)
  • Behavioral Economics (Joint with the Tepper School of Business)
  • Psychology and Behavioral Decision Research (Joint with the Department of Psychology)
  • Medical Scientist Training Program MD-PhD (Joint with the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine)
  • Autonomous and Human Decision Making (joint with the Machine Learning Department in the School of Computer Science)

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