Jake R. Embrey

Jake Embrey

Principal Researcher

University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

vita

jake.embrey@chicagobooth.edu

I am a cognitive psychologist currently working as a postdoc at the Chicago Booth School of Business. Before that, I completed my PhD in cognitive psychology under the supervision of Ben Newell at UNSW Sydney.

My research, for the most part, is focused on what can broadly be termed the ‘cost of thinking’. I’m interested in why people are averse to cognitively demanding tasks and avoid exerting what we colloquially call mental effort. My work aims to understand why effort is costly and how so-called cognitive costs influence people’s behaviour.

In the consumer behaviour domain I apply this approach to consumer search. In particular how cognitive costs influence search behaviours whether in online or real-world settings.

To answer these questions I use cognitive computational modelling, experimental methods, and real world data.

Selected Publications

Embrey, J. R. & Krefeld-Schwalb, A. (under review) Cognitive ability affects the coherence between preference estimates. 

Preprint

Embrey, J. R., Salim, J., Garner, K., & Watson, P. (2025) Modelling Pavlovian Bias in Depressed and Healthy Adolescents. Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

Embrey, J. R. & Inzlicht, M. (2025) Are metabolic costs needed to explain cognitive fatigue? Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Article

Schulze, C., Aka, A., Bartels, D. M., Bucher, S. F., Embrey, J. R., Gureckis, T. M., Haeubl, G., Ho, M. K., Krajbich, I., Moore, A. K., Oettingen, G., Ongchoco, J. D. K., Oprea, R., Reinholtz, N., & Newell, B. R. (2025) A Timeline of Cognitive Costs in Decision Making. Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Article

Embrey, J. R., Mason, A., Donkin, C., & Newell, B. R. (2025) On-task errors drive effort avoidance more than opportunity costs. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Article

Embrey, J. R., Mason, A., & Newell, B. R. (2024) Too hard, too easy, or just right? The effect of context on effort and boredom aversion. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. 31(6), 2801–2810

Article

Embrey, J. R., Donkin, C., & Newell, B. R. (2023). Is all mental effort equal? The role of cognitive demand-type on effort avoidance. Cognition, 236, 105440

Article

What were habitually his final meditations?

Of some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life.