Rima-Maria Rahal

Rima-Maria Rahal is a Researcher in the Cognition and Behavior group at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna), specializing in decision-making processes across social, moral, legal, and economic contexts. Her work employs innovative process-tracing methodologies including eye-tracking and thermal imaging to investigate cognitive and affective mechanisms underlying human choices.

Her research interests span decision science, moral psychology, process tracing, open science, and cross-cultural variations in decision-making. She has made significant contributions to understanding prosocial behavior, ingroup favoritism, and the cognitive foundations of moral judgments through large-scale international collaborations.

Dr. Rahal has published extensively in high-impact journals including Nature Human Behaviour, PNAS, and Psychological Science, with a focus on how cognitive processing modes influence moral judgments and how cultural contexts shape decision-making patterns. Her recent work includes a meta-analysis on intuitive deontology across 731 effects and a multi-country study examining cognitive processes of ingroup favoritism across 20 nations.

She is actively engaged in Open Science initiatives and has contributed to rethinking research funding mechanisms through her involvement with the 'More than Luck' project, advocating for alternative funding allocation procedures that address current systemic challenges in scientific research.