Dr Barbara Fasolo

Dr Barbara Fasolo is Associate Professor of Behavioural Science in LSE’s Department of Management and founder and director of the LSE Behavioural Lab (BL), a world-leading lab for behavioural and decision insights, where she leads the BL's "Decision Making under the Microscope" theme.

A behavioural decision scientist, she uses experiments and process tracing technology to design and tailor interventions for improving high-stakes decisions with tough trade-offs, risk and choice overload.

Her work has been published in world leading scientific journals (e.g. Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Science), and magazines (e.g. the Harvard Business Review).

She served as National Expert-in-Secondment at the European Medicines Agency where her Benefit-Risk team pioneered the design of the “Effects Table” – now adopted Europe-wide to improve drug regulatory decision-making, training and communication.

She served on the boards of major international societies, including the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and advisory boards, including the Behavioural Insights Expert Advisory Panel at the UK Department of Health, the former MIT Deep Empathy Lab, and the Radboud Center for Decision Science, in the Netherlands.

Before joining LSE, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany.

She holds a BSc in Economics from Bocconi University, an MSc in Decision Science from LSE, and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dr Fasolo is a member of the Organisational Behaviour Faculty Research Group.

Expertise

Behavioural decision science; decision process; choice architecture; debiasing; judgment and decision making; strategic decisions; decisions with risk and trade-offs; bias mitigation; AI and online decision technology

Dr Barbara Fasolo studies how behavioural decision science, digital tools and AI can be used to improve complex human judgment and decision making.

Her primary research traces the cognitive processes underlying complex decisions, identifying when these processes are adaptive and when they require support through debiasing, choice architecture, web-based tools or AI-enabled interventions tailored to individual, organisational and cultural contexts.

She pioneered research on online decision technology, showing through process-tracing methods that digital tools can both augment cognition — for example, by reducing perceived trade-offs— and undermine it, for example, by increasing dissatisfaction. This work anticipated current debates about AI as a double-edged tool for human reasoning and offers broader principles for understanding how attractive, easily accessible technologies shape decision processes. In her secondment to the European Medicines Agency, her team pioneered the design and testing of the "Effects Table," now adopted Europe-wide to ensure consistency and accuracy in risk-benefit judgments of regulators, training and communication to patients, benefitting global health.

A secondary research strand examines experimental methodology, particularly the effects of deception on interdisciplinary collaboration, participant behaviour and trust in science.

Her research has attracted major grants, including from the Swiss National Science Foundation, 100X Accelerator, EU Horizon, Google and the European Medicines Agency.

Her work has appeared in leading journals including Nature and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and has been featured by the BBC, BBC Radio 4, Harvard Business Review, New Scientist and other outlets.

Additional information:

• An illustration of her behavioural research using process tracing for complex decisions and intervention design.
• For policy impact of Dr Fasolo's research (requires login).
• A view of the six contemporary research themes that the LSE Behavioural Lab investigates.
• Overview of decision making research in the "Decision Making under the Microscope" theme that Dr Fasolo leads at the LSE Behavioural Lab.

See Dr Fasolo's work featured by:

• Harvard Business Review
• World Economic Forum

Courses:

• Full Time MSc elective course: Decisions Biases and Nudges (MG455)
• Executive MSc Compulsory course: Behavioural Decision Science (MG406E)
• Executive, open and custom: Strategic Decision Making (EE904)
• Undergraduate, summer school: The Science and Art of Decision Making (MG110)

Dr Fasolo's dynamic style transforms rigorous decision-making theories into actionable insights for better decision outcomes.

In her workshops and speaking engagements around the world, participants experience interactive demonstrations of the traps our human mind falls prey to when we decide in the presence of risk, uncertainty, pressure, and information overload. For each trap, she offers culturally appropriate solutions and the confidence for facing the most important, and often difficult, decisions.

In her tailored workshops in Strategic Decision Making she runs experiential sessions where these solutions are tested in the context of the live decisions of the participants, with the help of cutting-edge tools for improving human decision-making, including the Decision Canvas - a structured approach that Dr Fasolo created with Dr Umar Taj and includes debiasing, choice architecture, and appropriate use of AI and online tools.

Behavioural consulting includes in-house (e.g. via secondment) or external advisor roles to embed cutting edge bias mitigation techniques in the client organisation's decision-making processes and improve in-house expertise.

Additional information:

Dr Fasolo’s impact on policy is available as an LSE impact case. This followed a secondment as national expert at the EMA Benefit-Risk project.

View impact on HR practices of Dr Fasolo's framework of bias-mitigation intervention.

An example of a strategic decision workshop delivered in-person was at BX2025 – New Frontiers in Behavioral Science – Abu Dhabi, UAE – April 2025.

For an application of Dr Fasolo's expertise to strategic intelligence, see this post at the World Economic Forum.

For arranging public speaking activities see Dr Fasolo's profile at the Academic Speakers Bureau.

For commissioning research, consulting and training which leverages the skills and facilities of the LSE Behavioural Lab, please consult the LSE Behavioural Lab site.

Dr Fasolo (with Prof Irene Scopelliti, and Dr Claire Heard) integrated findings from 100 experimental studies to create a new framework for implementing bias mitigation strategies in organisations, identifying two distinct approaches to bias mitigation.

Debiasing directly engages with decision-makers to help them recognise and counter biases in their judgment and decision-making processes. Debiasing interventions can take several forms: training programmes that teach people about biases and strategies to avoid them, warnings that alert decision-makers to potential biases in specific situations, and feedback mechanisms that help people learn from their past decisions.

Choice architecture works by modifying the environment in which decisions are made, rather than trying to change the decision-maker's thinking. A choice architect might restructure how information is presented, adjust the default options available, or change how alternatives are framed.

The framework, published in the Journal of Management, highlights the decision-level, organisational-level and individual-level conditions under which each approach was found to be most effective.

This framework is a precious resource to inform future Research and Development of bias mitigation interventions to improve strategic decisions.

For more information on Dr Fasolo's new framework for the creation of bias mitigation interventions. please see features on LSE Department of Management website and HR Review.

For blogs exploring Dr Fasolo's research, please see:

• How to Upskill for 2022 | LSE Business Review
• Inspiring the researchers of tomorrow | LSE Management
• After 2008, the reputation of bankers took a nosedive, but are bankers really that bad? | LSE Business Review
• A decision maker’s dilemma | LSE Business Review
• How about tools for provoking decision capability? | Behavioural Public Policy