Hanne K. Collins

Hanne K. Collins is an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations at UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she joined the faculty in 2024. Her research examines effective listening in conversation, specifically studying the behaviors that ensure people are both being and feeling heard to foster interpersonal connection and rapport.

Her research interests include conversational listening, behavioral expressions of listening (particularly verbal expressions like follow-up questions), interpersonal conflict navigation, and the social foundations of well-being. She employs a combination of experiments and computational social science techniques, including natural language processing, to investigate how people can better navigate disagreements and improve conflict outcomes through linguistic markers of receptiveness.

Professor Collins' work has been featured in major media outlets including NPR, Time Magazine, LA Times, The Telegraph, and Harvard Business Review. Her research has appeared in premier academic journals such as Psychological Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Originally from Vancouver Island, she earned her PhD in Organizational Behavior from Harvard Business School and has returned to the West Coast to join UCLA Anderson. Her research has practical applications for improving conversations at work and in daily life, with implications for reducing political polarization and enhancing social connections.