Taya R. Cohen is a tenured professor at the Tepper School of Business. Cohen’s research provides valuable insights into how cognitive framing and moral character impact ethical behavior during business negotiations.
She holds an MA and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and has previously achieved a B.A. in Psychology from the Pennsylvania State University. Her Ph.D. dissertation focused on understanding moral character and ethical behavior in organizations.
Dr. Taya Cohen is the Professor of Organizational Behavior and Business Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. Cohen is the Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Business Ethics at Tepper with indefinite tenure and was the Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior & Theory without indefinite tenure. She holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences.
She was the Carnegie Bosch Junior Faculty Chair between 2015 – 2018 at Carnegie Mellon University and was on the Faculty of the American Association for Physician Leadership from 2013 – 2019. Previously, she has also worked as a postdoctoral Fellow at the Dispute Resolution Research Center at Northwestern University and taught a Negotiations course at Kellogg School of Management.
Dr. Cohen’s research focuses on honesty and moral character in organizations, negotiation and conflict management, and intergroup conflict and moral double standards. She has published extensively on these topics in top academic journals. A notable recent study published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that lawyers who view negotiations as a “game” with arbitrary rules are less likely to disclose honest information and exhibit lower moral character.
One interesting aspect of Cohen’s work is her focus on developing a “Negotiation Data Repository” to promote open science and data sharing in negotiation research. She has led roundtable discussions on this topic at academic conferences. Overall, her research provides insights for promoting ethical negotiation practices in business.
She co-directs the Collaboration and Conflict Research Lab, working with a team of faculty, doctoral students, and post-doctoral research fellows toward advancing applied and basic research on conflict, negotiation, and moral behavior.
At Carnegie Mellon, Cohen teaches courses related to organizational behavior, business ethics, and negotiations. Specifically, some of her courses include Negotiations, Managing People and Teams, Negotiations and Conflict Management, and Research Methods in the Behavioral Sciences. Her expertise lies in understanding the psychological factors that influence honesty, moral decision-making, and conflict resolution in business contexts.
Dr. Cohen’s teaching style employs experiential learning techniques like simulations and case studies in negotiations courses. She has received positive feedback from students on teaching effectiveness, accessibility, and approachability. She is known to be engaged in mentoring students and encouraging them to apply research to practice.
Cohen is a member of the International Association for Conflict Management and the Academy of Management. She also serves as a reviewer for top journals in organizational behavior and negotiations, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Negotiation Journal, Self & Identity, and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. She participated in the conference “Improving Software Engineering Teamwork with Structured Feedback.”
