Dispute Resolution Research Center (DRRC)

"This is going to change the trajectory of your entire career, and your life." That's what Taya Cohen's mentor told her when she received the job offer for the DRRC postdoc.

As we look ahead to our 40th anniversary, we're celebrating the remarkable people who have been part of our story. Taya Cohen, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2008–2010), is one of them. Read on as she reflects on her time at the DRRC, the journey that followed, and why that mentor was right.

What is one moment from your time at DRRC that stands out to you?

"What comes to mind is not one moment per se, but several memories with different sets of collaborators and friends that are emblematic of how special the opportunity of the DRRC postdoc was. It was sitting in offices at Kellogg discussing ideas in unstructured and wide-ranging conversations. Some of these conversations were scheduled, many were spontaneous; some led to study ideas and research papers, others led to lifelong friendships, and some gave rise to both."

How has your time at DRRC influenced your career path since then?

"While at Kellogg, I formed new collaborations and developed friendships with many Kellogg faculty, postdocs, doctoral students, and visiting scholars. It was an extraordinarily generative and productive time in my career. It is easy to see how strong the Kellogg influence has been on my research, with co-authored papers with faculty members (Leigh Thompson, Keith Murnighan, Robert Livingston), post-docs (Nir Halevy, Hal Hershfield, Evan Apfelbaum, Jennifer Jordan), and doctoral students (Brian Gunia, Sunny Kim, Eileen Chou). My time at the DRRC was short, but the relationships, collaborations, and programs of research that began those years ago continue on today, and I am immensely grateful for it."

This interview has been lightly edited and shortened for clarity.

DRRC-affiliated faculty William Brady and Maryam Kouchaki were recently featured in a Kellogg Insight article on how social media features reflect and shape the real world.

William Brady found that outrage fuels misinformation's spread: even engaging with misinformation in disagreement signals to the algorithm that it's worth promoting. Maryam Kouchaki discovered that racial bias affects follow-back behavior regardless of political leaning.

Read the full article at insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/take-5-social-media-irl

Take 5: Social Media … IRL? Kellogg faculty shed light on how social-media features such as influencer marketing, reposting, and “follow-backs” reflect and shape our offline lives.

Our seventh feature leading up to our 40th anniversary is Chris Bauman, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2006-2008).

What was the focus of your research during your time at DRRC?

"When I started the DRRC postdoc, my research focused on the intersection between justice and ethics. The field of behavioral ethics was really starting to take off at the time, and being a part of the DRRC connected me to a whole new network of scholars in business schools whose interests closely fit my own. The breadth and depth of my understanding grew very quickly as a result."

What is one moment from your time at DRRC that stands out to you?

"What stands out more than anything is the people I was lucky enough to get to know. On the faculty side, Adam Galinsky, Jeanne Brett, Leigh Thompson, Keith Murnighan, Kathy Philips, Amy Cuddy, and many others. All were so open and generous with their time, and Adam’s energy and enthusiasm was particularly inspiring. Also, there were so many PhD students and other postdocs who contributed to the amazing culture of intellectual curiosity, including Niro Sivanathan, Roderick Swaab, Zoe Kinias, Robert Lount, Li Huang. These lists just scratch the surface. I’m sure I’m forgetting some key people, so apologies in advance!"

How has your time at DRRC influenced your career path since then?

"There really isn’t any aspect of my career path that wasn’t influenced by the DRRC. My time at the DRRC allowed me to transition from social psychology to business, and that was exactly the right move for me. Being a part of the DRRC network still makes attending conferences more useful and so much more fun. I love reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones at each meeting. Also, negotiations remains my favorite course to teach."

Congratulations to DRRC-affiliated faculty member William Brady on being named to Poets&Quants’ prestigious “World’s Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors of 2026” list.

We’re proud to celebrate this well-deserved recognition and the impact William Brady continues to make in both research and teaching.

Read more at www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/news/blog/2026/05/18/poets-quants-kellogg-professors-best-under-40/?utm_medium=osocial&utm_source=LinkedIn

Strong negotiations begin long before anyone enters the room.

Developed by Hooria Jazaieri, Cynthia Wang, Laura Kray & Miguel Unzueta, K-Corp is a two-party negotiation exercise that challenges participants to think strategically about their priorities through a personalized weighted scoring system. We spoke with Hooria Jazaieri about the inspiration behind the case, its impact in the classroom, and the lessons students carry beyond it:

What inspired you to create this exercise?

"The exercise was inspired by a real-life situation involving a manager at a Silicon Valley tech firm and one of the top performers on the team. While managers often want to reward and retain high-performing employees, they are also operating within resource constraints and competing organizational demands. I wanted to create a negotiation exercise that reflected the complexity and realism of those workplace tensions."

What makes this exercise especially impactful in the classroom?

"Students walk away understanding the importance of creating a personalized scoring system before entering a negotiation. The exercise helps them see how quantifying their own priorities and tradeoffs can guide decision-making in real time. Many students also tell us that the spreadsheet becomes a practical template they can adapt for negotiations and important decisions outside the classroom as well."

What’s one key takeaway you hope students remember long after the discussion?

"Never go into an important negotiation without first thinking systematically about what matters most to you. Taking the time to clarify your priorities, tradeoffs, and bottom line (i.e., reservation price) in advance can dramatically improve both the negotiation process and the outcome."

👉 Buy the exercise now at teachwithkellogg.com/teaching-catalog/?s=corp

As we count down to our 40th anniversary celebration, we’re spotlighting members of our community who have shaped our journey.

Today, we feature Hal Hershfield, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2009–2011). His research focused on understanding how connections to our future selves are related to ethical decision-making, especially in the context of negotiation settings.

What is one moment from your time at DRRC that stands out to you?

"I learned so​ much from Adam Galinsky, Jeanne Brett, and Leigh Thompson (among others!) about the science of negotiation, and just loved teaching that class to the Kellogg MBAs. I still constantly reference the idea that “you can’t get what you don’t ask for.” And, in various ways, I’m still in touch with my collaborators and some former students. In fact, my 6-yr-old son now plays soccer with the nephew of one of my first students from Kellogg. The world is small!"

How has your time at DRRC influenced your career path since then?

"In so many ways. My first academic job was at NYU and I’m now at UCLA, in the marketing, behavioral decision making, and psychology departments. Even though I teach the core marketing class and not negotiations, I regular reference the power of perspective-taking. It’s valuable, of course, in negotiations, but also in the ways that firms relate to their consumers."

"It's important to keep on negotiating."

That's the lesson author Laura Rees hopes students carry with them from MotorWorks, a negotiation exercise set in the context of a global emissions scandal. Hear more from Laura Rees on MotorWorks' impact and key takeaways:

What makes this exercise especially impactful in the classroom?

"MotorWorks tends to speak to students in several ways and has an interesting ability, I believe, to spark to a wide range of student interests. Together, these different approaches that students naturally tend to take coalesce into a really rich simulation experience for them as well as a robust and often quite engaging post-negotiation debrief discussion. Students typically feel pretty passionately about the case and their negotiated solutions, regardless of what perspective they took while negotiating or solution they support after the debrief!"

What’s one key takeaway you hope students remember long after the discussion?

"I’d like students to think about how complex finding solutions is in the real world, when many issues and considerations are at stake and many stakeholders are at the table, and many others not at the table should also be considered. There are few “perfect” solutions, and this can be frustrating. But it doesn’t mean we should give up or not try in the first place. It can be frustrating, but the key thing to remember is that we get to matter—we can be at the table and it’s worth being there. It’s important to keep on negotiating."

👉 Bring MotorWorks to your classroom at teachwithkellogg.com/teaching-catalog/?s=motorworks

Our 40th anniversary celebration continues with our fifth feature: Dylan Wiwad, Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2019–2022).

Dr. Wiwad's research focused on understanding attitudes towards inequality. In particular, he worked with Nour Kteily to understand how to decompose complicated and intertwined political attitudes into their constituent parts.

What is one moment from your time at DRRC that stands out to you?

"I think for me the main moments that standout were teaching related. I really enjoyed teaching MBA students. I found them to be super engaged, engaging, and interested in the material. It was always fun to be teaching negotiations on the weekend, then seeing folks the next weekend and hearing about how they'd applied the course principles already in their day to day life and had it impact their outcomes at work."

How has your time at DRRC influenced your career path since then?

"Without the DRRC and how it welds together the academic and "industry" contexts, I don't know that I would be thinking about my work the same way. It was a strong perspective shift to move away from the theoretical or abstract nature of my home field (social psychology) to understand how it can influence my day-to-day life and the lives of those around me."

Before you begin leaning on AI, ask yourself: do I really understand how AI works?

DRRC affiliated faculty William Brady and Tessa Charlesworth are pushing leaders to think critically about AI. On this episode of Kellogg Insight's The Insightful Leader, they break down how bias shows up in AI systems, why it matters for your organization's values, and what leaders can do about it.

Tune in at insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/podcast-when-it-comes-to-biases-ais-only-human

Podcast: When It Comes to Biases, AI’s Only Human The AI models informing many of our decisions are riddled with preconceptions. On this episode of The Insightful Leader, two experts outline how bias creeps in.