SABA Master's Thesis Grant Recipients
2009: Bess Puvathingal (Temple University)
Bess Puvathingal received her undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis with a double major in Psychology and Biology. While at Washington University, Bess worked as a service provider for children with autism, utilizing behavioral analytic principles to facilitate communicative, social, and academic skills. This experience piqued her academic interest in behavior analysis. Upon completing her undergraduate degree, she pursued her Master’s degree in applied behavior analysis through the University of Nevada, Reno while working as an associate behavior analyst for the public school system. Following her training at UNR, Bess continued her work in the developmental disabilities sector by serving as a special education coordinator for behavior analytic services in St. Louis County.
In 2006, Bess began her doctorate in social psychology under the supervision of Dr. Donald A. Hantula at Temple University. Her research utilizes a behavioral economic paradigm to explore decision making under conditions of uncertainty. She studies escalation of commitment, defined as the recommitment of resources to a failing course of action. Escalation is often conceptualized as having “invested too much to quit.” An economics perspective suggests that it is irrational to consider prior costs in current decisions; future prospects should guide rational decision making. In stark contrast to this traditional economics perspective, the behavior analytic perspective suggests that prior events set the stage for decision making and that escalation is a rational strategy for making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. It is this perspective that serves as the framework for Bess’s research.
Her Master’s work at Temple extends the escalation literature by exploring the interaction between equivocality (i.e., random, unpredictable feedback) and sunk cost on escalation decisions. She utilizes a temporal analysis to clarify when and to what extent equivocality and sunk cost influence behavior, and to what extent those behaviors are actually “irrational.” As an application of her behavioral economic research, Bess is particularly interested in political decision making processes framed as escalation decisions. A current line of research examines escalation theory as it applies to international conflict situations, including a case study of the Iraq War.
Bess plans to continue her research on escalation and political decision making for the remainder of her program at Temple University. Upon finishing her doctorate, she is interested in applying her behavioral perspective to policy research. Bess would like to thank the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis for selecting her as a recipient of the Master’s Thesis Grant and for their generous support of graduate research.
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