There was a piece recently in the New Yorker about neuroeconomics in which some of my research was mentioned...
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Doctoral student (expected degree 2010)
New York University
Department of Psychology
Cognition & Perception Program

M.A., Psychology, New York University (Jan 2009)

B.A. in Psychological and Brain Sciences (2004)
Dartmouth College

Research

Since arriving at the Phelps Lab in the fall of 2005, I have pursued research in decision-making. This has involved study in the burgeoning field of neuroeconomics, as well as in the psychology of decision-making and social neuroscience. I have been conducting a series of studies in collaboration with Colin Camerer's lab at the California Institute of Technology, studying the phenomenon of loss aversion using behavioral methods, physiological measurements (including skin conductance and startle eyeblink), and functional imaging. To this work we have brought a parameterized study of the use of strategies in choice behavior, and shown that people can intentionally change how they make decisions, in a very specific and reliable fashion, and that these changes result not only in changes in the decisions people make, but also in their physiological reactions to wins and losses, and in their brain activity.  Some projects that are currently in development are aimed at more explicitly examining the relationship between arousal and decision-making, with pharmacological methods or induction techniques borrowed from other areas of psychology.  I also have some ongoing collaborations with other members of my lab, investigating the relationship between implicit and explicit beliefs and decision behavior in social contexts.  

Before NYU, I studied at Dartmouth College with Prof. William Kelley, Prof. George Wolford, and Dr. Joe Moran on an fMRI study of neural activity when anticipating and receiving rewards and punishments, and at Stanford University with Prof. John Gabrieli, Dr. Noa Ofen, and Dr. Ching Kao on studies involving the cognitive reappraisal of emotion, priming effects on judgments of learning, and the development of long term memory and executive functions.

Publications

Ofen, N., Kao, Y-C., Sokol-Hessner, P., Kim, H., Whitfield-Gabrieli, S., Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2007, August) Development of the declarative memory system in the human brain, Nature Neuroscience, 10, p1198-1205 

Sokol-Hessner, P., Hsu, M., Curley, N.G., Delgado, M., Camerer, C., Phelps E.A. (2009, March) Thinking Like A Trader Reduces Individuals' Loss Aversion

Stanley, D., Sokol-Hessner, P., Banaji, M., Phelps, E.A. (in preparation) In whom we trust: implicit race bias predicts bias in trust evaluations and decisions

Sokol-Hessner, P., Moran, J., Wolford, G.L., Kelley, W.M. (in preparation). Dissociating reward anticipation from reward outcome: an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study of nucleus accumbens behavior

Donovan, C.L., Sokol-Hessner, P., German, E., Van Horn, J.D., Miller, M.B. (in preparation). Sex and individual differences in brain activity during episodic retrieval, working memory, and semantic retrieval as measured with fMRI

Posters

Sokol-Hessner, P., Curley, N., Hsu, M., Delgado, M., Camerer, C., Phelps, E.A. (2006, September) Reappraising Loss Aversion:
Manipulating Choices with Emotion Regulation Strategies, Society for Neuroeconomics

Ofen, N., Kao, Y.C., Sokol-Hessner, P., Motsinger, J., Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2006, June) Developmental relationship between memory systems underlying successful memory encoding, working memory, source memory, and speed of processing, Organization for Human Brain Mapping

Donovan, C.L., Sokol-Hessner, P., German, E., Van Horn, J.D., Miller, M.B. (2006, Apr.) Sex and individual differences in brain activity during episodic retrieval, working memory, and semantic retrieval as measured with fMRI, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, #C138

McRae, K., Ochsner, K.N., Robertson, E.R., Sokol-Hessner, P., Ray, R.D., Gross, J.J., Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2006, Apr.) The developmental trajectory of the cognitive control of emotion, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, #F16

Donovan, C.L., Sokol-Hessner, P., German, E., Van Horn, J.D., Miller, M.B. (2005, Nov.) Sex and individual differences in brain activity during episodic retrieval, working memory, and semantic retrieval as measured with fMRI, Society for Neuroscience, #409.20

Sokol-Hessner, P., Kao, Y.C., Ofen, N., Motsinger, J., Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2005, Apr.) Relating the development of executive functions and long term memory, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, #G136

McRae, K., Ochsner, K.N., Robertson, E.R., Sokol-Hessner, P., Ray, R.D., Gross, J.J., Gabrieli, J.D.E. (2005, Apr.) Exploring the neural bases of the development of emotion regulation, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, #F117

Sokol-Hessner, P., Moran, J., Wolford, G.L., Kelley, W.M. (2004,
Oct.) Dissociating reward anticipation from reward outcome: an fMRI study of nucleus accumbens behavior, Society for Neuroscience, #785.13

Donovan, C.L., Sokol-Hessner, P., German, E., Van Horn, J.D., Miller, M.B. (2004, Apr.) Individual variability in brain activations during episodic retrieval compared to working memory and semantic retrieval: a longitudinal fMRI study, Cognitive Neuroscience Society, #B107

Talks

Sokol-Hessner, P. (2007, September) Thinking Like a Trader: The Effect of a Cognitive Strategy on Loss Aversion, NYU Mini-Convention Second Year Talk

Sokol-Hessner, P. (2006, December) Losses: Why Exactly Do We Totally Flip Out?: Evidence on loss aversion from our choices, arousal, and brains, NYU Psychology Cognition & Perception Brown Bag

Sokol-Hessner, P. (2006, May) Reappraising Loss Aversion: 
Manipulating Choices with Emotion Regulation Strategies, NYU Mini- Convention First Year Talk