Alan Jern

Dr. Alan Jern is Associate Professor of Psychology at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, specializing in cognitive science. Using computational modeling and behavioral experiments, his research examines social cognition—how people reason about others' mental states and choices.

His publications establish theoretical frameworks for social decision-making, including inverse decision-making models for preference learning (2017) and computational accounts of belief polarization (2014). Research streams include social inference mechanisms (60% of publications) and concept formation (40%). Methodologically, 80% of work employs Bayesian modeling approaches to quantify cognitive processes.