MBBL Symposium 2026: Judgement and Decision-Making in Virtual and Physical Worlds

The Monash Business Behavioural Laboratory (MBBL) invites you to its eighth annual symposium, a full-day, in-person event exploring how context, attention, stress and emerging technologies shape human judgement and decision-making.

Bringing together researchers from Monash University, the National University of Singapore, UNSW Sydney, the University of Queensland and QIMR Berghofer, the program unfolds across three sessions.

The morning session will examine the often-invisible influence of context and internal states on what we think and do, and how virtual reality can provide a safe place to rehearse decisions with real-world consequences. It will draw on evidence from employment decisions for people with intellectual disability, human-AI judgement across the virtual reality lifecycle, and emerging avatar-based training for inclusive workplaces.

The second session turns to attention and emotion, showing how laboratory and webcam-based eye tracking and skin conductance reveal what captures people's attention, and how these insights can inform the design of choices and safety communication. 

The afternoon will focus on cognition, stress and performance at work, linking cognitive assessment to real-world outcomes, tracking everyday stress with wearable sensors, and testing whether slow-paced breathing protects self-control under pressure.

This symposium is designed for researchers, practitioners and research students across business, economics, psychology and information technology. The day includes time for questions and networking throughout.

For speaker information and the event program, please visit our website.

For any enquiries, please contact mbus-events@monash.edu.