David R. Mandel

Institution Defence R&D Canada -- Toronto Current Position Group Leader and Senior Defence Scientist Highest Degree Ph.D. in Psychology from University of British Columbia, 1996 Research Interests Aggression Applied Social Psychology Attitudes Attribution Communication Conflict Resolution Emotion Ethics/Morality Evolution/Genetics Group Processes Helping/Pro-Social Behavior Intergroup Relations Internet/Cyberpsychology Interpersonal Processes Judgment/Decision Making Motivation/Goal Setting Neuroscience/Psychophysiology Organizational Behavior Person Perception Persuasion/Social Influence Political Psychology Prejudice/Stereotyping Psychology and Law Research Methods/Assessment Self/Identity Social Cognition Sociology   David R. Mandel Defence R&D Canada -- Toronto 1133 Sheppard Avenue West P.O. Box 2000 Toronto, Ontario M3M 3B9 Canada Skype Name: davidrmandel Enter your search terms Submit search form Bio Dr. David R. Mandel is a senior defence scientist and Group Leader of the Thinking, Risk, and Intelligence Group (TRIG) in the Adversarial Intent Section at DRDC Toronto, the human effectiveness centre within Defence Research and Development Canada, a special operating agency of the Canadian Department of National Defence. Dr. Mandel is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He was Associate Professor of Psychology from 2001-2004 at University of Victoria, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at University of Hertfordshire from 1998-2001, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University from 1996-1998. Dr. Mandel's research focuses on descriptive, normative, and prescriptive aspects of human judgment, decision making, thinking, and reasoning. His recent work is particularly concerned with expert judgment in the area of intelligence analysis. Dr. Mandel is also interested in studying the social, political, and psychological bases of collective violence and conflict. Dr. Mandel served as the Canadian representative on the NATO Technical Team of the Human Factors and Medicine Panel's Task Group 140 on Psychosocial, Organisational, and Cultural Aspects of Terrorism from 2006-2009. He is a Fellow of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), a past Editorial Board member of Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy and a current member of the Editorial Board of Basic and Applied Social Psychology. He has twice served as an ad-hoc review board member for NIH's Cognition and Perception section, has addressed The National Academies Committee on Behavioral and Social Science Research to Improve Intelligence Analysis for National Security, and The National Academies Committee on Field Evaluation of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences-Based Methods and Tools for Intelligence and Counter-intelligence. In 2005, Dr. Mandel co-edited The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking (Routledge) and he recently co-edited Neuroscience of Decision Making (Psychology Press). Dr. Mandel's basic research in cognitive psychology is funded by Discovery Grants (2002-2007, 2007-2012) from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). He is also the Principal Investigator of a Technology Investment Fund project on warning intelligence and influence processes pertaining to intra- and inter-state conflict (2007-2010) and the Principal Investigator of an Applied Research Program project on understanding and augmenting human capabilities for intelligence analysis (2008-2012). A particularly rewarding non-professional activity for Dr. Mandel was the editing of his mother's memoir A Survivor's Memoir, which was published by the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies in 2001. Publications Under review or in revision Mandel, D.R. On the psychology of evil in interpersonal and corporate contexts. Suedfeld, P., Frisch, S., Hermann, M.G., & Mandel, D.R. Integrative and conceptual complexity: Tracking the decisions of political leaders versus profiling their personalities. Derbentseva, N., McLellan, L., & Mandel, D.R. Issues in intelligence production: Summary of interviews with Canadian intelligence managers. Ferriday, C.L., Vartanian, O., & Mandel, D.R. Public but not private ego threat triggers aggression in narcissists. Vartanian, O., & Mandel, D.R. Imputing intent in international relations: It matters whether states are friends or foes. Bruine de Bruin, W., Fischhoff, B., Downs, J. S., Florig, H. K., Stone, E. R., Mandel, D. R., & Lerner, J. S. When disaster-preparation messages evoke fear and anger: Emotion effects on cognitive appraisals. Kamleitner, B., Mandel, D.R., & Dhami, M. K. Risky discounts: Do people prefer them on a per-item or per-purchase basis and why? Dhami, M.K., & Mandel, D.R. Expressions of rationality in defendants? choice of trial court. Books and Edited Special Issues Vartanian, O., & Mandel, D. R. (Eds.) (in press). Neuroscience of decision making [in the "Contemporary Approaches in Cognitive Neuroscience" series]. New York: Psychology Press. Mandel, D. R., & Dhami, M. K. (Eds.) (2005). Psychological perspectives on threats to democracy. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5(1). Mandel, D. R., Hilton, D. J., & Catellani, P. (Eds.) (2005). The psychology of counterfactual thinking. New York: Routledge. A review of The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking by Terry Connolly is available in the Summer 2007 edition of The European Association for Decision Making Bulletin. See also The EAESP Small Group Meeting on Counterfactual Thinking, Aix-en-Provence, France, May 16-18, 2001 Papers In press Mandel, D. R. (in press). What do Americans and Chinese think about themselves and each other? In S. Hoque & S. Clark (Eds.), What lies ahead? Debating the prospects for a "post-American world." Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press. Vartanian, O., & Mandel, D. R. (in press). Neural bases of judgment and decision making. In M. K. Dhami, A. Schlottmann, & M. Waldmann (Eds.), Judgment and decision making as a skill: Learning, development, and evolution. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. [PDF] Dhami, M.K., Mandel, D.R., & Garcia-Retamero, R. (in press). Canadian and Spanish youths? risk perceptions of drinking and driving and riding with a drunk driver. Journal of International Psychology.[PDF] Vartanian, O., Mandel, D. R., & Duncan, M. (in press). Money or life: Behavioral and neural context effects on choice under uncertainty. Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics. [PDF] Dhami, M. K., & Mandel, D. R. (in press). Crime as risk taking. Psychology, Crime and Law. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (in press). Mental simulation and the nexus of causal and counterfactual explanation. In C. Hoerl, T. McCormack, & S. Beck (Eds.), Understanding counterfactuals / understanding causation: Issues in philosophy and psychology. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. [PDF] Derbentseva, N. and Mandel, D. R. (in press). Using Concept Maps to improve the practice and organization of intelligence in Canada. In B. Moon, R. R. Hoffman, J. Novak, and A. J. Canas (Eds), Applied Concept Mapping: Theory, Techniques, and Case Studies in the Business Applications of Novakian Concept Mapping. Productivity Press / CRC Press / Taylor & Francis. [PDF] Vartanian, O., & Mandel, D. R. (in press). Introduction. In O. Vartanian and D. R. Mandel (Eds.), Neuroscience of decision making. New York: Psychology Press. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. & Vartanian, O. (in press). Frame, brains, and content domains: Neural and behavioral effects of descriptive content on preferential choice. In O. Vartanian and D. R. Mandel (Eds.), Neuroscience of decision making. New York: Psychology Press. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (in press). Affect and risk perception in the context of terrorism: Towards an understanding of its psychosocial aspects. In A. Speckhard (Ed.) Psychosocial, Organizational, and Cultural Aspects of Terrorism: Final Report to NATO HFM140/RTO. Brussels: NATO. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (in press). The role of instigators in radicalization to violent extremism. In A. Speckhard (Ed.) Psychosocial, Organizational, and Cultural Aspects of Terrorism: Final Report to NATO HFM140/RTO. Brussels: NATO. [PDF] 2010 [Also see 2002 for reprinted articles] Mandel, D. R. (2010). Predicting blame assignment in a case of harm caused by negligence. Mind & Society, 9, 5-17. [PDF] Mandel, D. R., Vartanian, O., Adams, B. D., & Thomson, M. H. (2010). Performance of UN military observer teams: Does victim proximity escalate commitment to saving lives? Human Performance, 23(3), 229-246. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. & Vartanian, O. (2010). Bush v. Bin Laden: Effect of state emotion on perceived threat is mediated by emotion towards the threat agent. International Review of Social Psychology, 23(1), 5-23. [Special issue on terrorism] [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2010, March). Confirmation and positive-test biases in hypothesis testing. Intelligence Analyst Training Newsletter, 8-9. [PDF] Campbell, A., & Mandel, D. R. (2010). Summary record of the GFF Community of Interest on the Practice and Organization of Intelligence Ottawa Roundtable: What can the cognitive and behavioural sciences contribute to intelligence analysis? Towards a collaborative agenda for the future. DRDC Toronto Contractor Report 2010-012. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2010). Radicalization: What does it mean? In T. M. Pick, A. Speckhard, & B. Jacuch (Eds.), Home-grown terrorism: Understanding and addressing the root causes of radicalisation among groups with an immigrant heritage in Europe (pp. 101-113). Amsterdam, Netherlands: IOS Press. [In NATO Science for Peace and Security Series E: Human and Social Dynamics -- Vol. 60] [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2010). Instigators and perpetrators of collective violence. In L. Fenstermacher, L. Kuznar, T. Rieger, & A. Speckhard (Eds), Protecting the Homeland from International and Domestic Terrorism Threats: Current Multi-Disciplinary Perspectives on Root Causes, the Role of Ideology, and Programs for Counter-radicalization and Disengagement (pp. 122-128). Arlington VA: Office of Secretary of Defense, Director, Defense Research & Engineering. [PDF] 2009 Mandel, D. R., & Vartanian, O. (2009). Weighting of contingency information in causal judgment: Evidence of hypothesis dependence and use of a positive-test strategy. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(12), 2388-2408. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2009). Applied behavioural science in support of intelligence: Experiences in building a Canadian capability. Commissioned report to the Committee on Field Evaluation of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences-Based Methods and Tools for Intelligence and Counter-intelligence, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education. Washington, D.C.: The National Academies. [PDF] Ferriday, C., Vartanian, O., & Mandel, D. R. (2009). Falling off the self-imposed pedestal: How audience presence and feedback affect aggressive responding in narcissists. DRDC Toronto Technical Report 2009-215. [PDF] Kamleitner, B., Dhami, M. K., & Mandel, D. R. (2009). Gambling for a discount: Preferring a discount per item to discount per purchase? Advances in Consumer Research, 36, 566-567. [PDF] 2008 Mandel, D. R. (2008). Violations of coherence in subjective probability: A representational and assessment processes account. Cognition, 106(1), 130-156. [PDF] Mandel, D. R., & Vartanian, O. (2008). Taboo or tragic: Effect of tradeoff type on moral choice, conflict, and confidence, Mind & Society, 7(2), 215-226. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2008, June). Judgment under uncertainty. Intelligence Analyst Training Newsletter, 7-9. [PDF] Pavlovic, N. J., Casagrande Hoshino, L., Mandel, D. R., & Dorn, A. W. (2008). Indicators and indices of conflict and security: A review and classification of open-source data. DRDC Toronto Technical Report 2008-167. [PDF] Pavlovic, N. J., Blackler, K., & Mandel, D. R. (2008). Conflict and security indices. DRDC Toronto Technical Memorandum 2008-168. [PDF] 2007 Dhami, M. K., Mandel, D. R., & Sothmann, K. (2007). An evaluation of post-adoption services. Children and Youth Services Review, 29(2), 162-179. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2007). Differential focus in causal and counterfactual thinking: Different possibilities or different functions? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(5), 460-461. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2007). Nested-sets theory, full stop: Explaining performance on Bayesian inference tasks without dual-systems assumptions. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 30(3), 275-276. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2007). Toward a concept of risk for effective military decision making. DRDC Toronto Technical Report 2007-124. [PDF] Williams, J. J., & Mandel, D. R. (2007). Do evaluation frames improve the quality of conditional probability judgment? In D. S. McNamara & J. G. Trafton (Eds.), Proceedings of the 29th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1653-1658), Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [PDF] 2006 Dhami, M.K., Mandel, D. R., Loewenstein, G., & Ayton, P. (2006). Prisoners' positive illusions of their post-release success. Law and Human Behavior, 30, 631-647. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2006). Economic transactions among friends: Asymmetric generosity but not agreement in buyers' and sellers' offers. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(4), 584-606. [PDF] [Featured in Harvard Negotiation Newsletter, 10(3), 12, March 2007 (see Research Summary "Dealing with Friends").] Mandel, D. R., & Vartanian, O. (2006). Is the weighting of contingency data contingent on the hypothesis assessed? In R. Sun & N. Miyake (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society (p. 2652). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. [PDF] White, K., Lehman, D.R., Hemphill, K. J., Mandel, D. R., & Lehman, A. M. (2006). Causal attributions, perceived control, and psychological adjustment: A study of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 36(1), 75-99. [PDF] 2005 [Also see 1999 for reprinted articles] Dhami, M. K., Mandel, D. R., & Souza, K. (2005). Escape from reality: Prisoner's counterfactual thinking about crime, justice and punishment. In D. R. Mandel, D. J Hilton, & P. Catellani (Eds.), The psychology of counterfactual thinking (pp. 165-182). New York: Routledge. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2005). Are risk assessments of a terrorist attack coherent? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 11(4), 277-288. [PDF] [Featured September 24, 2007, in The Washington Post.] Mandel, D. R. (2005). Counterfactual and causal explanation: From early theoretical views to new frontiers. In D. R. Mandel, D. J Hilton, & P. Catellani (Eds.), The psychology of counterfactual thinking (pp. 11-23). New York: Routledge. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2005). Threats to democracy: A judgment and decision making perspective. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5(1), 209-222. [PDF] Mandel, D. R., & Dhami, M. K.(2005). Introduction to the special issue, psychological perspectives on threats to democracy. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5(1), 205-207. [PDF] Mandel, D. R., & Dhami, M. K. (2005). "What I did" versus "What I might have done": Effect of factual and counterfactual thinking on blame, guilt, and shame in prisoners. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 637-645. [PDF] Mandel, D. R., Hilton, D. J., & Catellani, P. (2005). Introduction. In D. R. Mandel, D. J Hilton, & P. Catellani (Eds.), The psychology of counterfactual thinking (pp. 1-7). New York: Routledge. [PDF] 2004 Mandel, D.R. (2004). Social psychological perspectives on the instigation of collective violence. In D. Munos-Rojas, J.-M. Falomir, & X. Chryssochoou (Eds.) Proceedings of the Conference on War and Peace: Social Psychological Approaches to Armed Conflict and Humanitarian Issues] (pp. 183-190). Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross and University of Geneva. Mandel, D. R. (2004). Unanimity may be improbable; dictatorship is worse: Comment on The Dangers of Unanimity by R. B. Zajonc. Dialogue, 19(2), 28-29. [PDF] 2003 Dhami, M. K., & Mandel, D. R. (2003). Adoption Support Program Queen Alexandra Centre for Children's Health: Evaluation of Client Services 2003 Final Report [Technical Report]. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2003). Counterfactuals, emotion, and context. Cognition & Emotion, 17, 139-159. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2003). Effect of counterfactual and factual thinking on causal judgments. Thinking & Reasoning, 9, 245-265. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2003). Judgment dissociation theory: An analysis of differences in causal, counterfactual, and covariational reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 419-434. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2003). Simulating history: The problem of contingency. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 3, 177-180. [PDF] Mandel, D.R. (2003). The obedience alibi. In M.C. Cardwell, E.Clark and C.Meldrum (Eds.). Psychology for AS-level (3rd ed., p. 174). London: Collins. [PDF] Spellman, B. A., & Mandel, D. R. (2003). Causal reasoning, Psychology of. In Nadel, L. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science (Vol. 1, pp. 461-466). London: Nature Publishing Group. [PDF] 2002 Lehman, A. M., Lehman, D. R., Hemphill, K. J., Mandel, D. R., & Cooper, L. M. (2002). Illness experience, depression, and anxiety in chronic fatigue syndrome. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 52, 461-465. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2002). Beyond mere ownership: Transaction demand as a moderator of the endowment effect. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 88, 737-747. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2002). Evil and the instigation of collective violence. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 2, 101-108. [PDF] [Abbreviated reprint: Mandel, D. R. (2010). The war on terror is described as a battle between good and evil. In D. Bryfonski (Ed.), Violence in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. [PDF] Mandel, D. R. (2002). Instigators of genocide: Examining Hitler from a social psychological perspective. In L. S. Newman and R. Erber (Eds.), Understanding genocide: The social psychology of the Holocaust (pp. 259-284). New York: Oxford University Press. [PDF] Villejoubert, G., & Mandel, D. R. (2002). The inverse fallacy: An account of deviations from Bayes's theorem and the additivity principle. Memory & Cognition, 30, 171-178. [PDF] [Erratum] 2001 Mandel, D. R. (2001). Gain-loss framing and choice: Separating outcome formulations from descriptor formulations. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 85, 56-76. [PDF] 2000 Mandel, D. R. (2000). On the meaning and function of normative analysis: Conceptual blur in the rationality debate? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 23, 686-687. [PDF] 1999 Spellman, B. A., & Mandel, D. R. (1999). When possibility informs reality: Counterfactual thinking as a cue to causality. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 8, 120-123. [PDF] [Reprinted in: Spellman, B. A., & Willingham, D. T. (Eds). (2005). Current Directions in Cognitive Science: Readings from the American Psychological Society. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education / Prentice Hall.] 1998 Mandel, D. R. (1998). The obedience alibi: Milgram's account of the Holocaust reconsidered. Analyse & Kritik: Zeitschrift fur Sozialwissenschaften, 20, 74-94. [PDF] Mandel, D. R., & Lehman, D. R. (1998). Integration of contingency information in judgments of cause, covariation, and probability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 127, 269-285. [PDF] 1997 --- 1996 Mandel, D. R., & Lehman, D. R. (1996). Counterfactual thinking and ascriptions of cause and preventability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 450-463. [PDF] 1995 Mandel, D. R. (1995). Chaos theory, sensitive dependence, and the logistic equation. American Psychologist, 50, 106-107. [PDF] Mandel, D. R., Lehman, D. R., & Yuille, J. C. (1995). Reasoning about the removal of a child from home: A comparison of police officers and social workers. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25, 906-921. [PDF] 1994 Mandel, D. R., Lehman, D. R., & Yuille, J. C. (1994). Should this child be removed from home? Hypothesis generation and information seeking as predictors of case decisions. Child Abuse & Neglect, 18, 1051-1062. [PDF] Mill, D., Gray, T., & Mandel, D. R. (1994). The influence of research methods and statistics courses on everyday reasoning and belief in unsubstantiated phenomena. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, 26, 246-258. [PDF] 1993 Lehman, D. R., Davis, C. G., DeLongis, A., Wortman, C. B., Bluck, S., Mandel, D. R., & Ellard, J. H. (1993). Positive and negative life changes following bereavement and their relations to adjustment. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 12, 90-112. Mandel, D. R., Axelrod, L. J., & Lehman, D. R. (1993). Integrative complexity in reasoning about the Persian Gulf War and the accountability-to-skeptical-audience hypothesis. Journal of Social Issues, 49, 201-215. [PDF]

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