Hi, I'm Abel.
I’m a social scientist doing work that figures out how people behave, why they do it, and how to change it. Check out my sample projects to get a sense of what this looks like.
As a co-founder of XandY I help organizations build custom research studies to find out why people do what they do. Once we get that data, I help design and test strategies that make them more successful.
As a prof at U of Cincy I publish scientific research on social psychology, behavioral science, and strategic communication. I also lead teams of researchers and teach courses on research methods and communication strategy.
Before my career as researcher, I was an aspiring pro beach volleyball player.
Sample Projects
Here’s some things I’ve enjoyed working on recently:
~ Helping a major renewable energy company land a $158M development deal through a custom analysis of consumer behavior.
~ Leading National Geographic’s analysis and reporting of a $500k research project, with predictive models of conservation behavior across 12 countries.
~ Renovating the UX/UI of a SaaS ad tech platform by interviewing Fortune 500 advertising execs to uncover pain points.
~ Proving that digital ads perfectly tailored to a target audience can substantially move real-world political opinions in 2 congressional districts in just 30 days.
~ Beating the best election forecasts by adding online behavior data (e.g., Wikipedia pageviews) to our own prediction model.
~ Designing and executing the best (so far) national analyses of crypto user behavior, and seeing it covered in Forbes and Fox Business.
Plus, I get to build some great data visualizations:
First Principles
First Principles
Everything comes back to Quality. There’s just no substitute for doing really good work that actually matters.
The user is king. Value is usually determined by how people respond. Success comes from making something useful.
There is only one (1) shortcut to mastery and unfortunately it is: fearlessly asking dumb questions.
Perfectionism unmasked is just fear of taking action. Leap and learn!
Uncertainty is your friend. Swim in oceans of unknowns and make good decisions anyway.
Your past self and your future self are over there demanding that you immediately stop thinking about them and focus on the present.
The secret sauce has always been: curiosity, imagination, kindness, and persistence.
You really can in fact just do things.
Meme Bucket
