Stav Atir

Stav Atir serves as an Assistant Professor in the Management and Human Resources Department at the Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she joined in June 2021. She maintains dual affiliations with the Psychology department and the Institute for Diversity Science.

Her academic credentials include:

• B.Sc. in Psychology from Yale University
• Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Cornell University

Professor Atir's research examines pervasive misperceptions in expertise evaluation and learning processes, investigating why individuals overclaim knowledge and select ineffective learning strategies. Concurrently, she explores gender dynamics in professional communication, analyzing how linguistic patterns (e.g., surname usage for male professionals) perpetuate status disparities and bias in workplace contexts.

Her publication portfolio reveals strong thematic consistency across cognitive and social psychology domains. Key trends include experimental investigations of overclaiming phenomena, gendered language effects on professional perception, and the counterintuitive benefits of stranger interactions for knowledge acquisition. These works frequently bridge theoretical psychology with organizational behavior applications.

Professor Atir actively mentors doctoral students and secured competitive funding through the Institute for Diversity Science's 2024 Seed Grant Program for research at the business-diversity science intersection.

She directs the Knowledge Lab, which employs rigorous experimental methodologies to advance understanding of expertise calibration, learning optimization, and communication dynamics in professional environments.