Robb Rutledge

Robb Rutledge is an Assistant Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Yale University, where he directs the Rutledge Lab within the Department of Psychology. He is also a member of the Wu Tsai Institute at Yale. His research combines computational modeling with neuroimaging, pharmacology, and smartphone-based data collection to study the relationship between decision making and emotion across the lifespan.

Dr. Rutledge completed his BSc in Biology at Caltech and his PhD in Neural Science at New York University under Paul Glimcher. He conducted postdoctoral research at University College London's Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging with Ray Dolan and Peter Dayan. Prior to joining Yale, he was a Group Leader at the Max Planck Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research at UCL.

His research focuses on computational models of subjective feelings, particularly happiness. His lab developed the influential equation that happiness depends not on absolute outcomes but on whether events exceed recent expectations. This work has been extended to understand relationships between happiness, learning, social inequality, major depression, intrinsic reward, and neural mechanisms including dopamine signaling. Current projects examine how happiness relates to effort, music, language, and decision-making processes.

His lab uses innovative methods including smartphone apps like Happiness Quest, which has engaged over 100,000 participants worldwide. Recent publications demonstrate how language sentiment predicts depressive symptoms and how surprising sounds influence risky decision making, reflecting his lab's focus on computational psychiatry approaches to understanding mood disorders.

• MRC Career Development Award
• Society for Neuroeconomics Early Career Award
• APS Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions

The Rutledge Lab actively mentors numerous PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and technicians, with alumni now holding positions at institutions worldwide. The lab collaborates extensively with researchers at Mount Sinai, UCL, Trinity College Dublin, and the University of Minnesota, and regularly participates in the Computational Psychiatry Conference. Dr. Rutledge's work bridges computational neuroscience, clinical psychiatry, and real-world applications through digital mental health tools.