Argomenti trattati
Dr. M. Catalina Eneström combines training in business and experimental psychology to examine how connections between people guide interpretation of daily experiences. After completing a PhD in experimental psychology at McGill University and a postdoctoral fellowship at IESE Business School, she joined the Business School at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella as an Assistant Professor. Her publications include work in prestigious outlets such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and she hosts the podcast Just Your Average Employee, where she translates academic findings into practical guidance for workers and organizations.
Her career path reflects a blend of curiosity about social systems and a love of data. Early interests in the social side of commerce and questions about whether individual faults or broader systems drive events led her toward rigorous empirical research. A concurrent interest in statistics gave her the tools to test ideas systematically. These intellectual threads—contextual explanations for behavior and quantitative methods—are central to Eneström’s approach to studying how people create meaning together in both face-to-face and digital environments.
Academic journey and current role
Eneström’s role at the Business School of Universidad Torcuato Di Tella is part of a broader institutional push to integrate behavioral science into business education. She teaches within a newly formed behavioral science program and supervises research at the crossroads of social psychology and organizational behavior. Her background includes a Bachelor of Commerce with an emphasis on social context, and later advanced training culminating in a PhD from McGill University. Completing a postdoctoral fellowship at IESE Business School helped expand her network and methodological toolkit, preparing her for the mixed teaching, research, and program-building responsibilities she holds now.
Research focus and emerging questions
At the heart of Eneström’s work is the idea that people rely on others to interpret what happens to them. She studies how interpersonal alignment—what scholars call shared reality—affects emotional responses, decision-making, and group dynamics. One strand of her research investigates how people form shared understandings online, using platforms like Reddit to observe how alignment around beliefs and feelings can escalate into polarized or extreme group positions. By tracing conversational patterns and emotional resonance, she seeks to identify when online alignment supports constructive collaboration and when it fuels division.
Research on digital interactions looks for the mechanisms that transform private thoughts into collective positions. Eneström examines indicators such as language overlap, reciprocal validation, and persistence of mutual perspectives to define moments of shared reality. In online spaces, these processes can be amplified by affordances of the platform—anonymity, algorithmic curation, and rapid feedback loops. Understanding these dynamics helps explain how online communities can provide belonging and meaning, while also clarifying pathways toward radicalization or echo chambers when alignment becomes rigid.
AI, hybrid work, and spillover effects
Another active theme in her research explores how interactions with AI chatbots and the rise of hybrid work reshape interpersonal sensemaking. She investigates whether building rapport or agreement with artificial agents transfers to relations with colleagues and loved ones, and what behavioral consequences follow. These projects probe the social side of technological adoption: when people treat chatbots as conversational partners, do they alter expectations for human exchanges? The work aims to map potential benefits and unintended relational costs of commonplace AI usage.
Community, career advice, and life beyond academia
Eneström values professional communities like SPSP for their role in fostering collaboration and exposing researchers to diverse methods and topics. Her most vivid memory of the organization is attending her first annual meeting before beginning graduate studies—a moment that made the field feel expansive and inviting. For early-career scholars she stresses flexibility about geographic moves and openness to nontraditional paths. Practical experience in behavioral science consulting during her PhD underscored that applied roles can be intellectually rewarding alternatives to academic careers.
Outside of research, Eneström recharges through travel and outdoor activities: hiking, time at the beach, and surfing are ways she disconnects and gains perspective. If she had not pursued psychology, she says she likely would still work in applied behavioral science, translating theory into interventions that shape policy and organizational practices. Across her work and life, a consistent theme is the social nature of meaning—how we rely on others, human or artificial, to make sense of our world.