Todd Rogers

I design, evaluate, and scale innovations that help people thrive, make organizations more effective, and strengthen society.  This work leads to peer-reviewed research, new governmental policies, large-scale partnerships, and social enterprise startups.

My new research strengthens social connection by harnessing sports fandom (e.g., this).  To support this research program, I founded and lead the Harvard Fandom and Social Connection Initiative.

My previous research reduced student absenteeism by engaging families (e.g., this and this), and improved communication by making reading easier for skimmers (e.g., this and this)

Harvard Kennedy School of Government:

• Weatherhead Chair, Professor of Public Policy

• Faculty Director, Behavioral Insights Group

• Faculty Chair, Behavioral Insights and Public Policy, Executive Education Program

• Faculty Director, Graduate Commons Program

Social Enterprises:

• Fan U (Co-founder)

• EveryDay Labs (Co-founder, equity holder, board member, & unpaid Chief Scientist)

• Analyst Institute (Co-founder)

• Behavioral Communications (Co-founder)

Behavioral Science Advisory:

• ideas42 (Senior Scientist)

• Behavioural Insights Team (Academic Advisor)

• Behavioral Science and Policy Association (Executive Committee)

Rogers, T. & Lasky-Fink, J. (September, 2023). Writing for Busy Readers. Dutton Penguin Random House.

Rogers, T., & Feldman, A. (2025). Why all Americans should be football fans. TIME. https://time.com/7314403/football-fan-good-for-you/

Rogers, T., & Shulman, H. (2025, July 21). Scientific jargon can be ‘satisfying’ — but misleading. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02251-0

Rogers, T., Bailard, E., & Manley, M. (2024, October 31). 3 things you need to know about absenteeism. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-3-things-you-need-to-know-about-chronic-absenteeism/2024/10

Chohlas-Wood, A., Coots, M., Nudell, J., Nyarko, J., Brunskill, E., Rogers, T., & Goel, S. (2025). Automated reminders reduce incarceration for missed court dates: Evidence from a text message experiment. Science Advances, 11 (40), eadx7483.

Mapp, K., & Rogers, T. (2024). Attendance is a family affair. Educational Leadership, 81 (9), 42–47.

Shulman, H., Markowitz, D., & Rogers, T. (2024). Reading dies in complexity: Online news consumers prefer simple writing. Science Advances.

Feller, A., & Rogers, T. (2024). Reducing student absenteeism at scale: Translating social norms and attention interventions. In What works, what doesn’t (and when): Case studies in applied behavioral science. University of Toronto Press.

Lasky-Fink, J., & Rogers, T. (2022). Signals of value drive engagement with multi-round information interventions. PLOS One, 17 (10). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276072

Patel, M. S., Milkman, K. L., Gandhi, L., et al. (2022). A randomized trial of behavioral nudges delivered through text messages to increase influenza vaccination among patients with an upcoming primary care visit. American Journal of Health Promotion. https://doi.org/10.1177/08901171221131021

Cialdini, R., Lasky-Fink, J., Demaine, L. J., Barrett, D. W., Sagarin, B. J., & Rogers, T. (2021). Poison parasite defense: Turning frequently encountered duplicitous mass communications into self-negating memory retrieval cues. Psychological Science.

Lasky-Fink, J., Robinson, C., Chang, H., & Rogers, T. (2021). Using behavioral insights to improve school administrative communications: The case of truancy notifications.

Robinson, C., Chande, R., Burgess, S., & Rogers, T. (2021). Parent engagement interventions are not costless: Opportunity cost and crowd out of parental investment. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Bergman, P., Lasky-Fink, J., & Rogers, T. (2020). Simplification and defaults affect adoption and impact of technology, but decision makers do not realize it. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Nickerson, D. W., & Rogers, T. (2020). Campaigns influence election outcomes less than you think. Science, 369, 1181–1182.

Zlatev, J. J., & Rogers, T. (2020). Returnable reciprocity: Returnable gifts are more effective than unreturnable gifts at promoting virtuous behaviors. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 161, 74–84.

Dorison, C. A., Minson, J. A., & Rogers, T. (2019). Selective exposure partly relies on faulty affective forecasts. Cognition, 188 (July), 98–107.

Gottfried, M., & Hutt, E. (2019). Absent from school: Understanding and addressing student absenteeism. Harvard Education Press.

Kim, T., John, L. K., Rogers, T., & Norton, M. I. (2019). Procedural justice and the risks of consumer voting. Management Science, 65 (11), 5234–5251.

Robinson, C. D., Gallus, J., Lee, M. G., & Rogers, T. (2019). The demotivating effect (and unintended message) of awards. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Robinson, C. D., Pons, G. A., Duckworth, A. L., & Rogers, T. (2018). Some middle school students want behavior commitment devices (but take-up does not affect their behavior). Frontiers in Psychology, 9 (Article 206).

Robinson, C. D., Lee, M. G., Dearing, E., & Rogers, T. (2018). Reducing student absenteeism in the early grades by targeting parental beliefs. American Educational Research Journal, 26 (3), 353–383.

Rogers, T., & Feller, A. (2018). Reducing student absences at scale by targeting parents’ misbeliefs. Nature Human Behavior. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0328-1

Rogers, T., Goldstein, N. J., & Fox, C. R. (2018). Social mobilization. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 357–381.

Tannenbaum, D., Fox, C. R., & Rogers, T. (2017). On the misplaced politics of behavioural policy interventions. Nature Human Behaviour, 1 (10), 1–7.

Hauser, O. P., Linos, E., & Rogers, T. (2017). Innovation with field experiments: Studying organizational behaviors in actual organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 37, 185–198.

Rogers, T., Moore, D. A., & Norton, M. I. (2017). The belief in a favorable future. Psychological Science, 28 (9), 1290–1301.

Rogers, T., Green, D. P., Ternovski, J., & Young, C. F. (2017). Social pressure and voting: A field experiment conducted in a high-salience election. Electoral Studies, 46, 87–100.

Bailey, M. A., Hopkins, D. J., & Rogers, T. (2016). Unresponsive and unpersuaded: The unintended consequences of a voter persuasion effort. Political Behavior.

Gehlbach, H., Brinkworth, M. E., King, A. M., Hsu, L. M., McIntyre, J., & Rogers, T. (2016). Creating birds of similar feathers: Leveraging similarity to improve teacher-student relationships and academic achievement. Journal of Educational Psychology, 108 (3), 342–352.

Rogers, T., & Feller, A. (2016). Discouraged by peer excellence: Exposure to exemplary peer performance causes quitting. Psychological Science, 27 (3), 365–374.

Rogers, T., & Frey, E. (2016). Changing behavior beyond the here and now. In Blackwell handbook of judgment and decision making (1st ed.).

Rogers, T., Ternovski, J., & Yoeli, E. (2016). Potential follow-up increases private contributions to public good. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113 (19), 5218–5220.

Rogers, T., & Milkman, K. L. (2016). Reminders through association. Psychological Science, 27 (7), 973–986.

Rogers, T., Brinke, L., & Carney, D. (2016). Unacquainted callers can predict which citizens will vote over and above citizens’ stated self-predictions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(23), 6449–6453.

Rogers, T., Zeckhauser, R., Gino, F., Schweitzer, M., & Norton, M. (2016). Artful paltering: The risks and rewards of using truthful statements to mislead others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112 (3), 456–473.

Pierce, L., Rogers, T., & Snyder, J. A. (2015). Losing hurts: The happiness impact of partisan electoral loss. Journal of Experimental Political Science, 12 (October), 1–16.

Kraft, M. A., & Rogers, T. (2015). The underutilized potential of teacher-to-parent communication: Evidence from a field experiment. Economics of Education Review, 47, 49–63.

Rogers, T., Milkman, K. L., John, L. K., & Norton, M. I. (2015). Beyond good intentions: Prompting people to make plans improves follow-through on important tasks. Behavioral Science & Policy, 1 (2).

Allcott, H., & Rogers, T. (2014). The short-run and long-run effects of behavioral interventions: Experimental evidence from energy conservation. American Economic Review.

Frey, E., & Rogers, T. (2014). Persistence: How treatment effects persist after interventions stop. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Nickerson, D., & Rogers, T. (2014). Political campaigns and big data. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28 (2), 51–74.

Rogers, T., & Middleton, J. (2014). Are ballot initiative outcomes influenced by the campaigns of independent groups? A precinct-randomized field experiment. Political Behavior.

Rogers, T., Milkman, K. L., & Volpp, K. G. (2014). Commitment devices: Using initiatives to change behavior. JAMA, 311 (20), 2065–2066.

Fernbach, P. M., Rogers, T., Fox, C. R., & Sloman, S. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science, 24 (6), 939–946.

Rogers, T., & Aida, M. (2013). Vote self-prediction hardly predicts who will vote, and is (misleadingly) unbiased. American Politics Research, 42 (3), 503–528.

Rogers, T., Gerber, A. S., & Fox, C. R. (2012). Rethinking why people vote: Voting as dynamic social expression. In Behavioral foundations of policy.

Bryan, C. J., Walton, G. M., Rogers, T., & Dweck, C. S. (2011). Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (31), 12653–12656.

Malhotra, N., Michelson, M., Rogers, T., & Valenzuela, A. (2011). Text messages as mobilization tools: The conditional effect of habitual voting and election salience. American Politics Research, 39 (4), 664–681.

Rogers, T., & Norton, M. I. (2011). The artful dodger: Answering the wrong question the right way. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 17 (2), 139–147.

Milkman, K. L., Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. H. (2010). I’ll have the ice cream soon and the vegetables later: A study of online grocery purchases and order lead time. Marketing Letters, 21 (1), 17–35.

Milkman, K. L., Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. H. (2010). Highbrow films gather dust: Time-inconsistent preferences and online DVD rentals. Management Science, 55 (6), 1047–1059.

Nickerson, D., & Rogers, T. (2010). Do you have a voting plan? Implementation intentions, voter turnout, and organic plan making. Psychological Science, 21 (2), 194–199.

Caruso, H., Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). Boundaries need not be barriers: Leading and creating collaboration in decentralized organizations. In T. Pittinsky (Ed.), Crossing the divide: Intergroup leadership in a world of difference. Harvard Business School Press.

Gerber, A. S., & Rogers, T. (2009). Descriptive social norms and motivation to vote: Everybody’s voting and so should you. The Journal of Politics, 71 (1), 178–191.

Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. H. (2009). The emergence of affect in negotiations research. In Oxford companion to affective sciences.

Milkman, K. L., Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. H. (2008). Harnessing our inner angels and demons: What we have learned about want/should conflicts and how that knowledge can help us reduce short-sighted decision making. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3 (4), 324–338.

Rogers, T., & Bazerman, M. H. (2008). Future lock-in: Future implementation increases selection of “should” choices. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 106 (1), 1–20.*

Lira, B., Rogers, T., Goldstein, D. G., Ungar, L., & Duckworth, A. L. (under review). Coach not crutch: AI assistance can enhance rather than hinder skill development.

Dorison, C., & Rogers, T. (under review). Concise writing is more effective but is perceived as less important.