Dr. Cristina Bicchieri, S.J.P. Harvie Professor of Social Thought and Comparative Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, has been selected to address the College of Liberal and Professional Studies Class of 2019 at the graduation ceremony on Sunday, May 19.
Dr. Bicchieri is the Director of the Philosophy, Politics and Economics program and head of the Behavioral Ethics Lab (BeLab) in the School of Arts and Sciences. She is the Director of the Master of Behavioral and Decision Sciences program in the College of Liberal and Professional Studies, now in its second year. She also founded the Penn Social Norms Group (PENN SoNG), which provides research, consulting, and training services to organizations that aim to positively impact human behavior.
Drawing from philosophy and game theory as well as cognitive and social psychology, Dr. Bicchieri’s interdisciplinary research explores how social expectations emerge, change, and influence behavior, as well as how to understand and affect how people make decisions. A world authority on social norms and behavioral ethics, Dr. Bicchieri has worked with UNICEF, the World Bank, the Gates Foundation, and the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, among other organizations. Her international consulting and training experiences led her to develop measures and sustainable interventions for social norms in the field. Her books, The Grammar of Society: The Nature and Dynamics of Social Norms (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure and Change Social Norms (Oxford University Press, 2016), explore applications of her social norms studies in behavioral experiments and fieldwork.
Dr. Bicchieri holds an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Milan and completed her PhD in Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University. She received Lund University’s Pufendorf Medal in 2015 for her interdisciplinary research on social norms and was knighted by the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in recognition of her contribution to the arts and sciences.
