I am an Associate Professor at FGV EBAPE (Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration, Fundação Getulio Vargas), where I teach quantitative research methods applied to the social and behavioral sciences in the MSc and PhD programs.

My research examines the behavioral and cognitive processes that shape health outcomes: the decisions people make about their own health, the judgments clinicians make about their patients, and the policy environment in which both take place. On the first, I have studied strategies to encourage blood donation and interventions to improve the eating habits of children and adolescents. On the second, how cognitive biases shape physicians’ diagnostic reasoning. The third grew out of the COVID-19 pandemic, when I helped build measures of the stringency of government responses and studied how those policies related to mental health and to adherence to protective behavior. During that period I served on the Mental Health Task Force of The Lancet COVID-19 Commission and as an associate researcher on the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker.

Because health policy is both made and received politically, this work extends into how political polarization shapes compliance with public health measures. A further line of work examines how social class shapes behavior, including prosociality, price sensitivity, and leadership dynamics. My work has appeared in journals such as The Lancet Public Health, Nature Human Behaviour, Nature Communications, BMJ Quality & Safety, JAMA Network Open, the Journal of Applied Psychology, the Journal of Politics, the Journal of Consumer Research, and the Journal of Marketing Research.

Over the past two years I have worked closely with AI, initially out of curiosity about what it can do for and with me in my own research practice. That interest has since become a subject of study in its own right, and it connects naturally to my work on clinical reasoning — how judgments get made under uncertainty, and what changes when a machine is part of that process.

Selected Publications

• Moura, E. C. de, Goldszmidt, R., & Andrade, E. B. (2026). Evidence of availability bias in diagnostic reasoning following real clinical encounters: A cross-sectional survey of physicians. BMJ Quality & Safety. Advance online publication.

• Kubinec, R., Barceló, J., Goldszmidt, R., Grujic, V., Model, T. A., Schenk, C., Cheng, C., Hale, T., Messerschmidt, L., & Petherick, A. (2025). Cross-national measures of the intensity of COVID-19 public health policies. The Journal of Politics, 87(4), 1623–1627.

• Vieites, Y., Ferreira, C. M., Goldszmidt, R., & Andrade, E. B. (2024). Stigmatizing deferrals disproportionally reduce donor return rates: Evidence from Brazil. Vox Sanguinis, 119(6), 606–611.

• Ferreira, C. M., Vieites, Y., Goldszmidt, R., Barros, L. S. G., & Andrade, E. B. (2024). Short- and long-term effects of incentives on prosocial behavior: The case of ride vouchers to a blood collection agency. Social Science & Medicine, 352, Article 117019.

• Furst, R., Goldszmidt, R., Andrade, E. B., Vieites, Y., Andretti, B., & Ramos, G. A. (2024). Longitudinal attenuation in political polarization: Evidence from COVID-19 vaccination adherence in Brazil. Social Science & Medicine, 348, Article 116783.

• Lagowska, U., Sobral, F., Jacob, J., Hafenbrack, A. C., & Goldszmidt, R. (2024). Following community norms or an internal compass? The role of prospective leaders’ social category membership in the differential effects of authentic and ethical leadership on stereotype threat. Journal of Applied Psychology, 109(5), 622–649.

• Zucco, C., Lenz, A.-K., Goldszmidt, R., & Valdivia, M. (2023). Do political preferences affect policy learning and uptake? Evidence from a field experiment with informal entrepreneurs. The Journal of Politics, 85(3), 1003–1016.

• Aknin, L. B., Andretti, B., Goldszmidt, R., Helliwell, J. F., Petherick, A., De Neve, J.-E., Dunn, E. W., Fancourt, D., Goldberg, E., Jones, S. P., Karadag, O., Karam, E., Layard, R., Saxena, S., Thornton, E., Whillans, A., & Zaki, J. (2022). Policy stringency and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic: A longitudinal analysis of data from 15 countries. The Lancet Public Health, 7(5), e417–e426.

• Jacob, J., Vieites, Y., Goldszmidt, R., & Andrade, E. B. (2022). Expected socioeconomic-status-based discrimination reduces price sensitivity among the poor. Journal of Marketing Research, 59(6), 1083–1100.

• Goldszmidt, R., Petherick, A., Andrade, E. B., Hale, T., Furst, R., Phillips, T., & Jones, S. (2021). Protective behaviors against COVID-19 by individual vaccination status in 12 countries during the pandemic. JAMA Network Open, 4(10), Article e2131137.

• Petherick, A., Goldszmidt, R., Andrade, E. B., Furst, R., Hale, T., Pott, A., & Wood, A. (2021). A worldwide assessment of changes in adherence to COVID-19 protective behaviours and hypothesized pandemic fatigue. Nature Human Behaviour, 5(9), 1145–1160.

• Hale, T., Angrist, N., Goldszmidt, R., Kira, B., Petherick, A., Phillips, T., Webster, S., Cameron-Blake, E., Hallas, L., Majumdar, S., & Tatlow, H. (2021). A global panel database of pandemic policies (Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker). Nature Human Behaviour, 5(4), 529–538.

• Vieites, Y., Goldszmidt, R., & Andrade, E. B. (2021). Social class shapes donation allocation preferences. Journal of Consumer Research, 48(5), 775–795.

• Andretti, B., Goldszmidt, R. B., & Andrade, E. B. (2021). How changes in menu quality associate with subsequent expenditure on (un)healthy foods and beverages in school cafeterias: A three-year longitudinal study. Preventive Medicine, 146, Article 106456.

• Ferreira, C. M., Goldszmidt, R., & Andrade, E. B. (2019). The short- and long-term impact of an incentive intervention on healthier eating: A quasi-experiment in primary- and secondary-school cafeterias in Brazil. Public Health Nutrition, 22(9), 1675–1685.

• Goldszmidt, R. B., Buttendorf, A. R., Schuldt Filho, G., Souza, J. M., Jr., & Bianchini, M. A. (2019). The impact of generic labels on the consumption of and adherence to medication: A randomized controlled trial. European Journal of Public Health, 29(1), 12–17.

• Mansur, J., Sobral, F., & Goldszmidt, R. (2017). Shades of paternalistic leadership across cultures. Journal of World Business, 52(5), 702–713.

Awards and Honors

• 2026 — Margaret Levi Award for the Advancement of Comparative Methodology, Comparative Politics Section, American Political Science Association (to the Metaketa Initiative, EGAP).

• 2025 — Ranked 11th among Brazilian researchers most influencing public policy worldwide, Agência Bori and Overton.

• 2020 — Best Conference Theme Individual Paper Award, Society for Consumer Psychology.

• 2017 — Robert J. House Best Paper Award, GLOBE Project (GLOBE 2017).