Nils Olsen

Dr. Nils Olsen is a full-time faculty member in the Organizational Sciences Program, within the Department of Organizational Sciences & Communication, at The George Washington University. He is trained as a social psychologist and statistician and approaches his research and teaching from a behavioral economics perspective (Ph.D. in Social Psychology; additional concentration in statistics; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; M.A. in Social Psychology, University of Iowa at Iowa City; & B.S. in Psychology, University of Wisconsin at Madison).

Dr. Olsen explores how people make decisions in high-intensity settings – all within pressures of time constraints, major consequences for failure, and information overload. His specific research interests include: (a) decision-making in high-intensity settings (e.g., medical, financial, legal), consumer decision-making. All of these interests contribute to Dr. Olsen’s overall goal of exploring phenomena related to decision-making and cognitive processing in individuals and organizations.

Dr. Olsen has publications appearing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Social Cognition, Academic Emergency Medicine, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Brain Research Bulletin, Journal of the Association for Consumer Research (JACR, University of Chicago Press), and Handbook of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

His applied experience includes work within the Global Executive MBA Program at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Duke Corporate Education, Inc., the American Bar Foundation, the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH), and Deutsche Asset Management (Deutsche Bank). His presentations include events at JP Morgan Chase, the Trading Floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the Association for Psychological Science, London Business School, the International Convention on Science, Education, and Medicine in Sport (ICSEMIS), the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), and the National Geographic Channel.

Dr. Olsen has been honored with The George Washington University’s (Columbian College of Arts & Sciences) Graduate Programs Advisor of the Year Award (2013), nominated for the Honey Nashman Spark a Life Award (2015), and nominated for the GW Student-Athletes' Professor of the Year Award (Finalist in 2017 & Nominee in 2018, 2019).

As a tribute to his commitment to research, Dr. Olsen has successfully mentored Organizational Sciences majors to secure either the #1 or #2 spots (or both) in GW's Research Showcase for 8 consecutive years: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 (2020 – pandemic), 2021, & 2022.