Professor Abele received her training at the interdisciplinary research center on "Bounded Rationality, Economic Modeling and Behavioral Decision Making" at the University of Mannheim, Germany, and obtained her Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Prior to joining the faculty at Miami she taught at Erasmus University, Rotterdam School of Management, Netherlands for three years.

Dr. Abele's research interests comprise the social cognitive processes involved in strategic, interdependent decision making. Specifically, she examines how people tacitly coordinate their actions, how coordination is affected by the timing of decisions and the social consequences of coordination successes and failures. Relevant to these issues, she has proposed a distinction between matching and mismatching coordination problems. Her work on coordination is supported by an NSF grant. Additionally, she does research on decisions involving public goods and on the reasons for the tendency to overbid in auctions.

Abele, S., & Stasser, G. (2008). Coordination success and interpersonal perceptions: Matching and mismatching. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 576–592.

Abele, S., & Diehl M. (2008). Finding team mates who are not prone to sucker and free-rider effects: The Protestant Work Ethic as a moderator of motivation losses in group performance. Group Processes and Intergroup Relations, 11, 39–54.

Abele, S., & Ehrhart, K. (2005). The timing effect in public good games. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 41, 470-481.

Abele, S., Bless, H., & Ehrhart, K. (2004). Social information processing in strategic decision-making: Why timing matters. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 93, 28-46.