Research

My current research interests run along three main themes.

  • Wisdom of crowds and expert judgmentImproving expert, clinical, and geopolitical forecasts by aggregating many judgments well.
  • Bias and censorship in scienceHow ideological bias and moral reasoning shape which findings are pursued and accepted.
  • Judgment and social cognitionHow social influence shape how people judge situations.

Wisdom of the crowd and expert judgment

When and how does combining many people's judgments produce a better answer than any one expert? I study aggregation models for expert, clinical, and geopolitical forecasting, and the cognitive traits that make some crowds wiser than others.

Publications

Wisdom of the (expert) crowd: Performance of aggregation models for FHR evaluations

Urs, M., & Luhmann, C. C. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 47 (2025).

Bias and censorship in science

Science is a human enterprise, and human biases shape it. This work examines how ideological commitments and moral reasoning — including the naturalistic fallacy — influences how we judge empirical research.

Publications

Kudos to CUDOS: Thinking beyond viewpoint diversity to remedy politicized science

Urs, M., & Clark, C. J. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, in press.

Judgment and social cognition

Earlier work (from undergrad) on how cognitive load, framing, and social pressure shape judgments — from courtroom decisions to everyday choices.

Publications

The effects of victim gender identity, juror gender, and judicial instructions on victim blaming, crime severity ratings, and verdicts in sexual assault trials

Carter, L. M., Goodmon, L. B., Urs, M., & Rutledge-Jukes, H. Journal of Homosexuality (2022).

The power of the majority: Social conformity in sexual harassment punishment selection

Goodmon, L. B., Gavin, D. J., Urs, M., & Akus, S. N. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 50(8), 441–455 (2020).

Too much on my mind: Cognitive load, working memory, and framing effects

Urs, M., Goodmon, L. B., & Martin, J. North American Journal of Psychology, 21(4), 739–769 (2019).