Cameron Hecht

My research seeks to identify psychological processes that contribute to societal problems, develop theory-based interventions that target these processes, and identify the features of contexts that enable these interventions to be effective. I draw on theories of identity, motivation, and persuasion to understand and change how individuals experience social environments, such as schools and workplaces, and examine how these environments might be adapted to help people thrive. I test my research questions and evaluate psychological interventions using a combination of laboratory and field experiments. Using this approach, I have developed interventions that have successfully addressed group-based disparities in academic motivation and performance, mental health and stress, political polarization, and more. My work also frequently applies modern, Bayesian machine-learning methods to model and understand the heterogeneous effects of interventions across contexts.

Hecht, C. A., Buontempo, J., Boylan, R., Crosnoe, R., & Yeager, D. S. (2024). Mindsets, contexts, and college enrollment: Taking the long view on growth mindset beliefs at the transition to high school. Journal of Research on Adolescence. https://doi.org/10.1111/jora.13002 Asher, M. W., Harackiewicz, J. M., Beymer, P. N., Hecht, C. A., Lamont, L. B., Else-Quest, N. M., Priniski, S. J., Thoman, D. B., Hyde, J. S., & Smith, J. L. (2023). Utility-value intervention promotes persistence and diversity in STEM. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(19), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300463120 Demszky, D., Yang, D., Yeager, D. S., Bryan, C. J., Clapper, M., Chandhok, S., Eichstaedt, J. C., Hecht, C. A., Jamieson, J., Johnson, M., Jones, M., Krettek-Cobb, D., Lai, L., JonesMitchell,