Philip Tetlock

Philip Tetlock
  • Leonore Annenberg University Professor in Democracy and Citizenship
  • Professor of Management
  • Professor of Psychology

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    3203 SH-DH
    3620 Locust Walk
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: social and cultural psychology, decision processes

Links: CV, Personal Website, Department of Psychology

Overview

Education

Ph.D. Yale University, 1979 (Psychology);
M.A. University of British Columbia, 1976;
B.A. University of British Columbia, 1975;

Academic Experience

2011 -present Leonore Annenberg University Professor, School of Arts and Sciences (Psychology) and Wharton School (Management), University of Pennsylvania;
2002- 2010 Mitchell Endowed Professorship, Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley;
2005-2006 Russell Sage Scholar;
1996-2001 Harold Burtt Professor of Psychology and Political Science, The Ohio State University;
1993-1994 Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford;
1993-1995 Distinguished Professor, University of California, Berkeley;
1988-1995 Director, Institute of Personality and Social Research, University of California, Berkeley;
1987-1996 Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley;
1984-1987 Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley;
1980-1995 Research Psychologist, Survey Research Center, University of California, Berkeley;
1979-1984 Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley;

Administrative Experience

Group Chair, Organizational Behavior and Industrial Relations, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, 2002-present;
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, 2003-2004;
Director, Ph.D. programs, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley;
Director, Institute of Personality Assessment and Research (renamed in 1992 as Institute of Personality and Social Research), University of California, Berkeley, 1988-1995.

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Research

  • Pavel Atanasov, J. Witkowski, Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock (Under Review), The person-situation debate revisited: Forecasting skill matters more than elicitation method.

  • Philip Tetlock, Lu Yunzi, Barbara Mellers (2022), False Dichotomy Alert: Improving Subjective-Probability Estimates vs. Raising Awareness of Systemic Risk, International Journal of Forecasting.

  • E. Karger, J.T Monrad, Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock (Under Review), Reciprocal scoring: A method for forecasting unanswerable questions.

  • Ike Silver, Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock (2021), Wise teamwork: Collective confidence calibration predicts the effectiveness of group discussion, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology .

  • Ville Satopää, Marat Salikhov, Philip Tetlock, Barbara Mellers (2021), Decomposing the Effects of Crowd-Wisdom Aggregators: The Bias-Information-Noise (BIN) Model, International Journal of Forecasting.

  • Christopher Karvetski, Carolyn Meinel, Daniel Maxwell, Lu Yunzi, Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock (2021), Forecasting the Accuracy of Forecasters from Properties of Forecasting Rationales, International Journal of Forecasting.

  • Ville Satopää, Marat Salikhov, Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock (2021), Bias, Information, Noise: The BIN Model of Forecasting, Management Science.

  • Pavel Atanasov, Lyle Ungar, Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock (2020), Small steps to accuracy: Incremental belief updaters are better forecasters, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

  • A.P. McGraw, Derick F. Davis, Sydney Scott, Philip Tetlock (2016), The Price of Not Putting a Price on Love, Judgment and Decision Making.

  • Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction (2015)

Teaching

Current Courses (Spring 2023)

  • PSYC4998 - Mentored Research

    Mentored research involving data collection. Students do independent empirical work under the supervision of a faculty member, leading to a written paper. Normally taken in the junior or senior year.

    PSYC4998061

All Courses

  • MGMT2760 - Cultiv Judgment Skills..

    This course will explore the diverse ways in which scholars and practitioners have defined "good judgment." And it will introduce students to practical tools for assessing and improving judgment, with special emphasis on probabilistic reasoning. Students will have the opportunity both to fine-tune their personal judgment skills as well as to master and then weave together insights from several bodies of scientific knowledge, including frequentist and Bayesian statistics, psychological work on judgment and choice, group dynamics, organizational behavior and political science (key concepts discussed in Tetlock's (2015) book "Superforecasting"). We will focus on bottom-line accuracy in sizing up real world problems. Class work will be primarily exercises, including working as an individual and in teams. You will have opportunities to forecast on a wide range of political, business, and macro-economic questions, which we will use as feedback tools to help you calibrate your judgment. Assessments include a weekly concept test and a final group presentation aimed to help you improve your judgment. The goal is to launch you on the lifelong process of learning how much trust you should place in your judgments of trustworthiness.

  • MGMT9330 - Psych Found MGMT

    This seminar-based course, with active discussion and analysis, is required of all first-year doctoral students in Management and open to other Penn students with instructor permission. The purpose of this course is to examine and understand basics in the theory and empirical research in the field of micro organizational behavior and to build an understanding of people's behavior in organizations and across organizations. The course covers a blend of classic and contemporary literature so that we can appreciate the prevailing theories and findings in various areas of organizational behavior. This course covers micro-organizational behavior, focused on topics such as influence/status, virtual teams, job design, organizational culture and socialization, identity in organizations and overall look on where the field of micro-organizational behavior is going.

  • PPE2355 - Political Psychology

    This course will explore psychological approaches to understanding political beliefs, attitudes, and actions at the levels of both individual citizens and national leaders. It will also explore the possibility that psychological science itself is not immune to the political debates swirling around it. Specific topics will include: the workings of belief systems (and their power to shape what we "see"), cognitive biases (and their power to cause miscalculations), sacred values and their role in stabilizing belief systems and social interaction, personality and ideology (the linkages between the personal and the political), and clashing conceptions of morality and distributive and corrective justice (striking variations among people in what they consider to be fair). We shall also explore some topics that have sparked controversy in the psychological research literature and that tend to polarize opinion along political lines, including work on intelligence and unconscious bias.

  • PSYC2355 - Political Psychology

    This course will explore psychological approaches to understanding political beliefs, attitudes, and actions at the levels of both individual citizens and national leaders. It will also explore the possibility that psychological science itself is not immune to the political debates swirling around it. Specific topics will include: the workings of belief systems (and their power to shape what we "see"), cognitive biases (and their power to cause miscalculations), sacred values and their role in stabilizing belief systems and social interaction, personality and ideology (the linkages between the personal and the political), and clashing conceptions of morality and distributive and corrective justice (striking variations among people in what they consider to be fair). We shall also explore some topics that have sparked controversy in the psychological research literature and that tend to polarize opinion along political lines, including work on intelligence and unconscious bias.

  • PSYC4998 - Mentored Research

    Mentored research involving data collection. Students do independent empirical work under the supervision of a faculty member, leading to a written paper. Normally taken in the junior or senior year.

  • PSYC4999 - Honors Mentored Research

    The Honors Program has been developed to recognize excellence in psychology among Penn undergraduates and to enhance skills related to psychological research. The 4998 credit signifies an Honors Independent Study, completed as part of the Honors Program. The honors program involves: (a) completing a year-long empirical research project in your senior year under the supervision of a faculty member (for a letter grade). This earns 2 cu's. (b) completing a second term of statistics (for a letter grade) before graduation. (c) participating in the year-long Senior Honors seminar (for a letter grade). This seminar is designed especially for Psychology Honors majors; this receives a total of 1 cu. (d) participating in the Undergraduate Psychology Research Fair in the Spring semester, at which honors students present a poster and give a 15-minute talk about their research. (e) a total of 15 cu's in psychology is required. Students will be selected to be part of the Honors Program in the Spring of their junior year (see application process online)

  • PSYC6000 - Proseminar in Psych

    Choice of half or full course units each sem. covering a range of subjects and approaches in academic psychology.

  • PSYC6999 - Indiv Res for 1st Yr Grd

    Individual Research for First-Year Graduate Students

  • PSYC9999 - Independent Study

    Individual Study and Research

Awards and Honors

  • Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009
  • Harold Lasswell Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution in the Field of Political Psychology, 2008
  • Grawemeyer World Order Prize, 2007
  • Woodrow Wilson Award for best book published on government, politics, or international affairs, 2006
  • Robert E. Lane Award for best book in political psychology, American Political Science Association, 2006
  • National Academy of Sciences Award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of War, 1999
  • MacArthur Fellow in International Security and Conflict Resolution, 1999-2001
  • Nevitt Sanford Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Political Psychology, International Society of Political Psychology, 1997
  • Woodrow Wilson Book Award, American Political Science Association (co-recipient with P. Sniderman & R. Brody, for Reasoning and choice: Explorations in political psychology), 1992
  • Philip Converse Book Award for outstanding book in the field published five or more years ago, American Political Science Association (for co-authored book, Reasoning and choice: Explorations in political psychology, 1992
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science Prize for Behavioral Science Research, 1988
  • MacArthur Fellow in International Security and Conflict Resolution, 1987-1989
  • Fellow of Division 8 of the American Psychological Association, 1987
  • Erik H. Erikson Award of the International Society of Political Psychology, 1987
  • Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1987
  • Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Social Psychology, American Psychological Association, 1986
  • Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship, 1977-1979
  • Yale University Fellowship, 1976-1977
  • Governor-General’s Gold Medal, Award for Undergraduate Academic Excellence, 1975
  • British Columbia Psychological Association Gold Medal, 1975

In the News

Knowledge at Wharton

Activity

Latest Research

Pavel Atanasov, J. Witkowski, Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock (Under Review), The person-situation debate revisited: Forecasting skill matters more than elicitation method.
All Research

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