I am interested in what it feels like to be human and how that phenomenology influences our judgments and decisions in the social world. These interests have led me to investigate the interrelations between cognition, emotion, and behavior in everyday life. Specific research topics include adult perspective taking, the psychology of happiness and well-being, emotion perception, charitable decisions, political polarization, and basic processes in judgment and decision making.

Primary Interests:

Emotion, Mood, Affect
Judgment and Decision Making
Life Satisfaction, Well-Being
Person Perception
Political Psychology
Self and Identity
Social Cognition

Emotion, Mood, Affect
Judgment and Decision Making
Life Satisfaction, Well-Being
Person Perception

Political Psychology
Self and Identity
Social Cognition

Research Group or Laboratory:

Emotion, Decisions, Judgment, and Intuition (EDJI) Laboratory [Map]

Journal Articles:

Andrade, E., & Van Boven, L. (2010). Feelings not foregone: When people underestimate the affective impact of inaction. Psychological Science, 21, 706-711.
Epley, N., Keysar, B., Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2004). Perspective taking as egocentric anchoring and adjustment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 327-339.
Oskarsson, A., Van Boven, L., Hastie, R., & McClelland, G. (2009). What’s next? Judging sequences of binary events. Psychological Bulletin, 135, 262-285.
Savitsky, K. K., Van Boven, L., Epley, N., & Wight, W. (2005). The unpacking effect in allocations of responsibility for group tasks. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 447-457.
Van Boven, L., & Ashworth. (2007). Looking forward, looking back: Anticipation is more evocative than retrospection. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 136, 289-300.
Van Boven, L., & Campbell, M., & Gilovich, T. (2010). Stigmatizing materialism: On stereotypes and impressions of materialistic versus experiential pursuits. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 36, 551-563.
Van Boven, L., Dunning, D., & Loewenstein, G. (2000). Egocentric empathy gaps between owners and buyers: Misperceptions of the endowment effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 66-76.
Van Boven, L., & Gilovich, T. (2003). To do or to have? That is the question. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 1193-1202.
Van Boven, L., Kamada, A., & Gilovich, T. (1999). The perceiver as perceived: Everyday intuitions about the correspondence bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1188-1199.
Van Boven, L., Kane, J., McGraw, A. P., & Dale, J. (2010). Feeling close: Emotional intensity reduces perceived psychological distance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 872-885.
Van Boven, L., Kruger, J., Savitsky, K., & Gilovich, T. (2000). When social worlds collide: Overconfidence in the multiple audience dilemma. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 620-629.
Van Boven, L., & Loewenstein, G. (2003). Projection of transient drive states. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29, 1159-1168.
Van Boven, L., Loewenstein, G., & Dunning, D. (2005). The illusion of courage in social predictions: Underestimating the impact of fear of embarrassment on other people. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 96, 130-141.
Van Boven, L., White, K., & Huber, M. (2009). Immediacy bias in emotion perception: Current emotions seem more intense than previous emotions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 368-382.
Van Boven, L., White, K., Kamada, A., & Gilovich, T. (2003). Intuitions about situational correction in self and others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 249-258.

Courses Taught:

Emotion and Intuition
Heuristics and Biases
Judgment and Decision Making

Emotion and Intuition
Heuristics and Biases

Judgment and Decision Making

Leaf Van Boven
Department of Psychology and Neuroscience
Muenzinger Hall UCB 345
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309
United States

Phone: (303) 735-5238