I am an Associate Professor at the Prague University of Economics and Business and at the Charles Univeristy, Czech Republic - Contacts.

My primary research interests include behavioral economics, social psychology, and management sciences. In particular, I am interested in the biological drivers of behavior, decision making biases, dis/honesty, and deception - Publications | Google Scholar | Research Gate. The five recent publications that best exemplify my research:

• Houdek, P., Bahník, Š., Hudík, M., & Vranka, M. (2021). Selection Effects on Dishonest Behavior. Judgment and Decision Making, 16(2), 238–266. [pdf | html | OSF]
  
  • The study showed that people low in moral character are likely to dominate cheating-enabling environments, where they then cheat extensively. We uniquely showed that interventions trying to limit the preference of this environment backfired as they led to the selection of the worst fraudsters.

• Houdek, P. (2020). Fraud and Understanding the Moral Mind: Need for Implementation of Organizational Characteristics into Behavioral Ethics. Science and Engineering Ethics, 26(2), 691–707. [pdf | html]
  
  • In this conceptual paper, I aimed to highlight that there are organizational processes and other organizational macro-level forces that are rarely reflected in behavioral ethics, because they are emulated experimentally only with difficulty. I offered some solutions to the problem.

• Vranka, M., Frollová, N., Pour, M., Novakova, J., & Houdek, P. (2019). Cheating Customers in Grocery Stores: A Field Study on Dishonesty. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 83, 101484. [pdf | html | OSF]
  
  • The study measured how often customers are cheated in real-world transactions; we also explored the relationships between dishonesty and gender, the time of day, and location.

• Bahník, Š., Houdek, P., Vrbová, L., & Hájek, J. (2019). Variations on anchoring: Sequential anchoring revisited. Judgment and Decision Making, 14(6), 711–720. [pdf | html | OSF]
  
  • We replicated the anchoring effect using the sequential anchoring paradigm; we also tested a new debiasing procedure, based on providing reference points on the numerical scale which prevented the sequential anchoring effect.

• Houdek, P. (2017). Puppet Master: Possible Influence of the Parasite Toxoplasma gondii on Managers and Employees. Academy of Management Perspectives, 31(1), 63–81. [pdf | html]
  
  • In this conceptual paper, I highlighted behavioral effects of the toxoplasma-infection in humans; and speculates on the possible impacts on skills and careers of employees and managers, organizational dynamics, intercultural management, and gender work roles. 

I was (and sometimes I still am) also an science writer and a commentator in several Czech newspapers - Blog and some of my popular articles [in Czech].