Sanchaita Hazra
sanchaita.hazra[at]utah.edu
Department of Economics
University of Utah

I am a third-year PhD student in Economics at the University of Utah. My research interests are behavioral economics, experimental economics (Lab/Field), and applied microeconomics. I am advised by Prof. Haimanti Bhattacharya and Prof. Subhasish Dugar. I also actively collaborate with Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence.

I focus on understanding the learning effects and ability of deception detection with experience using neoclassical methods. Furthermore, I plan to explore how humans perceive and benefit from AI and technology in education, marketplaces, and political scenarios.

Previously, I worked as a statistician at DeepFlux and research assistant at ISI Kolkata when I worked with Prof. Priyodarshi Banerjee and Prof. Saibal Kar. In 2021, I was also a Guest Lecturer at Women's Christian College. I founded Alankar, a women-run online jewelry brand fostering positive social impact on employbility.


CV  |  LinkedIn

Research

Experience, Learning and the Detection of Deception
with Priyodarshi Banerjee and Sanmitra Ghosh
Published, July 2023
Journal of Economic Criminology
paper | slides

Deceptive communication or behavior can inflict loss, making it important to be able to distinguish these from trustworthy ones. This article pursues the hypothesis that repeated exposure or experience can cause learning and hence better detection of deception. We investigate using data culled from events in a TV game show. Decision-makers in the show repeatedly faced situations where they had to correctly identify an individual from within a group all claiming to be that individual. Increased experience reduced average detection error in the sample. Analysis of the data suggested this relationship was significant and driven by learning.

Humans, Artificial Intelligence, and (Text-based) Misinformation
with Bodhisattwa P. Majumder, Haimanti Bhattacharya, and Subhasish Dugar
Working paper

We conduct a laboratory experiment utilizing data from a TV game show, where natural conversations surrounding an underlying objective truth between individuals with conflicting objectives lead to intentional deception. We pursue several lines of inquiry: Do individuals seek the assistance of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to aid their discernment of truth from text-based misinformation? Are individuals willing to pay for the service provided by the AI? We also investigate factors that may influence individuals' reluctance in or excessive dependence on seeking AI assistance, such as "AI aversion" or its absence, as well as overconfidence in one's ability to identify the truth. Furthermore, we examine, while controlling for the predictive accuracies of both the majority of humans and the AI tool, whether individuals, in comparison to the AI tool, are more or less inclined to submit the same guess that a majority of other individuals had submitted for that episode as their own.

To Tell The Truth: Language of Deception and Language Models
with Bodhisattwa P. Majumder
Working paper

We analyze a novel TV game show data where conversations in a high-stake environment between individuals with conflicting objectives result in lies. We investigate the manifestation of potentially verifiable language cues of deception in the presence of objective truth. We show that there exists a class of detectors (based on a Large Language Model) that have similar truth detection performance compared to human subjects, even when the former accesses only the language cues while the latter engages in conversations with complete access to all potential sources of cues (language and audio-visual). Our model detects novel but accurate language cues in many cases where humans failed to detect deception, opening up the possibility of humans collaborating with algorithms and ameliorating their ability to detect the truth.

Funding Fanny - Microfinance and Empowerment of Women in India
with Sanchita San
Bachelors Thesis
Oral presentation at International Conference on Sustainable Development and Education, 2020
Oral presentation at Research Scholar's Workshop 2020, Visva-Bharati

paper

Women make up a substantial majority of India's poor and they are the cruelest victims of the society. Organizing women through Self Help Groups and equipping them to undertake income-generating activities through the formation of microenterprises have created an economic revolution in the country. The paper focuses on the scope and rationale of microfinance in India and how the Self Help Group-Bank Linkage Programme by NABARD has played its part in empowering rural women financially. We find positive increase in loan disbursements, but sheer increase in loan outstanding over a period of ten years.

Awards
Talks
  • [2023] Humans, Artificial Intelligence, and (Text-based) Misinformation at North American ESA.
  • [2023] Humans, Artificial Intelligence, and (Text-based) Misinformation at BREW ESA, India.
  • [2023] Experience, Learning and the Detection of Deception at WEAI, San Diego.
  • [2021] Experience, Learning and the Detection of Deception at Behavioral Econ Workshop, UofU.
  • [2020] Funding Fanny--Microfinance and Empowerment of Women in India at Intl Conf on Sustainable Dev & Edu.
Teaching
  • [2023] Instructor, Principles of Microeconomics, Econ 2010, Fall23, UofU
  • [2023] Instructor, Intermediate Microeconomics, Econ 4010; Summer23, UofU
  • [2023] Instructor, Intermediate Microeconomics, Econ 6010; Summer23, UofU
  • [2022] Instructor, Q-Pod Tutoring; Fall22, Spring23
  • [2021] Guest Lecturer, Women's Christian College, University of Calcutta

© Sanchaita Hazra
Thanks to Jon Barron for this nice template
Vibrant Kolkata skyline art is from here