Research
My research moves from the self to society: how people make decisions and pursue their goals, and how they perceive and categorize others. I study how everyday beliefs and practices, like folk theories and rituals, shape cooperation, relationships, and policy views, and how much of it all is cultural.
Ramadan as a natural experiment
Each year, hundreds of millions of people fast from dawn to sunset for a month. I lead a research program that uses Ramadan to study self-regulation, cognition, and cooperation outside the lab, supported by a $499,887 grant from the Templeton World Charity Foundation.
Decisions
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Self-deprivation and cognition in Ramadan: Could fasting practice improve inhibitory control?
Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2025
Over the month, fasters improved more in inhibitory control than non-fasters, especially those high in trait self-control.
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From self-deprivation to cooperation: How Ramadan fasting influences risk-aversion and decisions in resource dilemmas
Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 2023
Fasting was linked to more risk-averse and more cooperative choices in anonymous resource dilemmas.
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Ramadan fasting as a goal-pursuit: Why people fast, and how motives affect their experience
Motivation Science, 2023
Why people fast shapes how hard the fast feels.
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Temporary self-deprivation can impair cognitive control: Evidence from the Ramadan fast
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2022. Rad et al.
Food reminders made Ramadan fasters slower and less accurate on an unrelated control task, so chosen deprivation still taxes attention.
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Loss of control is not necessary to induce behavioral consequences of deprivation: The case of religious fasting during Ramadan
Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2017. With Ginges
Self-imposed deprivation produces risk and loss aversion even when people are in control, which challenges scarcity-only accounts.
Culture, identity and politics
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Misperceptions in protest affect and action among resident and diaspora activists: Online versus on-the-ground in the 2009–2012 Iranian post-election protests
Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 2026
Resident and diaspora activists from Iran's 2009 protests experienced them similarly, yet each misread the other: diaspora members imagined protests felt worse on the ground, and residents saw diaspora activists as focused on mechanics rather than purpose.
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Folk theories of gender and anti-transgender attitudes: Gender differences and policy preferences
PLoS ONE, 2019. Rad et al.
Beliefs about what makes someone a man or a woman predict anti-transgender attitudes and policy preferences, and these differ by gender.
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Toward a psychology of Homo sapiens: Making psychological science more representative of the human population
PNAS, 2018. Rad et al.
Nearly all research in a leading psychology journal relies on Western samples yet generalizes to all humans; we proposed concrete reporting fixes.
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Folk theories of nationality and anti-immigrant attitudes
Nature Human Behaviour, 2018. With Ginges
How people think nationality is acquired, by birth or by belonging, predicts their attitudes toward immigrants.
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The role of retributive justice and the use of international criminal tribunals in post-conflict reconciliation
European Journal of Social Psychology, 2018. Li et al.
How support for international criminal tribunals and retributive justice relates to reconciliation after conflict.
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Private rituals, public in mind, and the shifting scope of religious prosociality: Evidence from Ramadan
Under review
Fasting itself didn't make people more generous; making it salient did, and group-identity cues made giving parochial.
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Folk essentialist theories of religious and national identity: Evidence from Palestine, Israel, and the United States
In revision. With Ginges
How people in Palestine, Israel, and the US think religious and national identity is inherited, and what that predicts.
Methods
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Wearable device data collection from existing device owners via crowdsourcing platforms: A feasibility study using Jamasp
Under review. With Radmanesh
Recruiting people who already own Fitbits through Prolific yielded high data completeness across heart rate, sleep, and activity over 65 days.
The full list is on Google Scholar.