Madhuri Ramasubramanian, Ph.D.

Research Interests

Dr. Ramasubramanian’s research examines how people perceive and understand risk, and its influence on various judgements and decisions. An overarching theme of her work relates to the measurement and promotion of risk literacy (i.e., the ability to understand and evaluate risk in the service of informed decision making) across diverse domains – including extreme weather (communicating risk information about flooding and hurricanes), climate change and artificial intelligence in medical decision making. More specifically, her research  focuses on leveraging psychometric techniques to robustly measure and model domain general and domain specific risk perceptionswith implications for designing effective risk communications.

Awards & Honors

Provost’s Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, 2020

Chuck Gettys Award for Outstanding Research in Graduate School, 2021

Finalist for the Lee Lusted Student Prize at the Society for Medical Decision Making Annual Conference, 2023

Selected Publications

Cho, J., Cokely, E.T., Ramasubramanian, M., Allan J. N., Feltz, A., Garcia-Retamero, R. (2023). Numeracy Does Not Polarize Climate Change Judgments: Numerate People Are More Knowledgeable and Knowledge is Power. Decision.

Ramasubramanian, M., Patel, D., Turner, M. R., & Ybarra, V. T. (2021). The influence of life narrative themes on resilience and life outcomes. Personality and Individual Differences, 85, 11235.

Ramasubramanian, M., Allan, J. N., Garcia-Retamero, R., Cokely E.T., & Jenkins-Smith, H. C. (2019). Flood Risk Literacy: Communication and Implications for Protective Action. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (Vol. 63, No. 1, pp. 1629-1633). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

Vallée-Tourangeau, G., Vallée-Tourangeau, F., & Ramasubramanian, M. (2016). The Description-Experience Gap in Risky Choice Framing. Proceedings of the Cognitive Science Society Annual Meeting.