About

Sanford E. DeVoe is a professor of Management and Organizations at UCLA Anderson School of Management, serving as senior associate dean of MBA programs. His research focuses on the psychological consequences of placing a monetary value on time, examining how people evaluate trade-offs between time and money, and how these perceptions influence individual well-being, organizational practices, and societal outcomes. Using survey and experimental methods, his work explores how organizations can be changed to enhance well-being for individuals, organizations, and society. DeVoe earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology with high honors from Swarthmore College and completed his Ph.D. in organizational behavior at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. He has received numerous awards, including the Excellence in Teaching award six times and the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, where he worked prior to joining UCLA Anderson in 2015. His scholarly contributions include extensive publications in top journals, and he has served as a senior editor at Organization Science and on editorial boards of leading management and psychology journals. DeVoe is a recognized expert in his field, frequently quoted in major media outlets such as The Economist, Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He is also known for his interest in tennis and travel, with a goal of attending all four Grand Slam tournaments.

Research topics

• Economics
• Psychology
• Social psychology
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Knowledge management
• Finance
• Business
• Demographic economics
• Management
• Cognitive psychology
• Process management

Selected publications

• A humanizing separation from work: the benefits of rewarding people with vacation instead of money

  Journal of Managerial Psychology · 2025-08-21

  articleSenior author

  Purpose In the context of the labor relationship, this paper investigates whether receiving vacation, compared to an equivalent monetary bonus, enhances employees’ feelings of humanness. Design/methodology/approach Three preregistered experiments with 2,206 total participants were conducted using recall and vignette methodologies. Findings Receiving vacation significantly increased employees’ feelings of humanness compared to equivalent monetary bonuses. In Study 1, recalling vacation experiences led to greater felt humanness than recalling monetary bonuses. Study 2 showed that hypothetically receiving additional vacation days (vs money) enhanced perceived segmentation, which mediated the positive effect on humanness. Study 3 provided direct causal evidence that greater segmentation during a hypothetical vacation increased felt humanness. Practical implications These findings provide managers with empirical evidence supporting the psychological benefits of offering vacation as a reward. Organizations aiming to enhance employee well-being and reinforce humane workplace values might benefit from incorporating time-based rewards into their incentive structures. Originality/value This paper is the first to empirically compare vacation and monetary rewards on perceived humanness. It contributes novel insights into the role of segmentation in reward perception, highlighting the unique advantage of time off in promoting psychological detachment from work and enhancing employees’ holistic sense of feeling human.

  PublisherDOI

• A Humanizing Separation from Work: The Benefits of Rewarding People with Vacation Instead of Money

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• How Time Management, Autonomy, and Flexibility Can Shape the Employee Experience

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Business

  For many employees, the Covid-19 pandemic and the period following it has become a moment to redefine where and how to work. Following the pandemic, employees across industries in the United States are placing an increased importance on time flexibility and autonomy and leaders are looking for ways to implement flexible work strategies that create equitable opportunities for all employees. This renewed focus on flexibility leads us to question whether policies that existed before the pandemic are still effective today (e.g. flexible work policies) and whether policies that were deemed to be harmful in the past are effective now (e.g., telecommuting). To address these critical questions, this symposium looks at how time and autonomy-related rewards, policies, and norms shape the employee experience. Specifically, across five talks, we explore the psychological factors that influence whether telecommuting has positive or negative consequences for the employee experience, the downstream benefits and costs of time-based rewards like vacation and flexible work, how to offer choice to employees in a way that encourages them to express their true feelings (i.e. consent), and how to manage increased interruptions that arise from hybrid work. By studying the informal (team collaboration norms and consent) and formal (telecommuting and flexible work) policies and rewards (paid vacation) that impact the experiences of workers in today’s economy, the papers in this symposium provide novel and timely insights into when and how certain time and autonomy-related practices are beneficial (or harmful) to employees' organizational identification, commitment, career outcomes, and well-being, with potential implications for how leaders should promote these policies and practices. Legitimizing “Deep-Work”: When Collaboration Norms Promote Employee Wellbeing Author: Ashley Whillans; Harvard Business School Author: Justine Murray; Harvard Business School Giving People the Words to Say No Makes Them Feel Freer to Say Yes Author: Rachel Schlund; Cornell U. Author: Roseanna Sommers; U. of Chicago Law School Author: Vanessa Bohns; Cornell U. Staying in Love from Far Away: How Moral Legitimacy of Telecommuting Sustains Commitment Author: Julia D. Hur; New York U. Author: Rachel Lise Ruttan; U. of Toronto Author: Jun Lin; Stanford Graduate School of Business The Career Consequences of Flexible Work Policies: Considering Gender and Rank Author: Vanessa Conzon; Boston College Author: Duanyi Yang; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Author: Dongwoo Park; ILR at Cornell Author: Erin Kelly; Massachusetts Institute of Technology Vacation (vs. Monetary) Rewards Decrease Objectification and Increase Employee Well-Being Author: Alice Jihyun Lee-Yoon; UCLA Anderson School of Management Author: Sanford Ely DeVoe; UCLA

  PublisherDOI

• Social Pitfalls At Work: Mistaken Beliefs About Maximizing Workplace Social Value

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2023-07-24

  articleSenior author

  Much of employees’ professional success and emotional well-being comes from their social interactions in the workplace. Unfortunately, employees sometimes fail to socialize as effectively as they could, reducing their social capital at work and limiting the potential benefits they could gain from building strong social connections in the workplace. This symposium demonstrates four new ways that employees fail to maximize their social value at work, and additionally suggests a reason why they do so: workers have mistaken forecasts regarding their social interactions. In particular, the symposium showcases four distinct contexts of social interactions – talking to dissimilar others, seeking help, gossiping, and being humorous – and suggests methods for improving social capital and consequently career success. Taken together, these symposium presentations shed light on the various pitfalls, mistaken beliefs, and surprising ignorance we have when it comes to optimal workplace socialization. The research findings will encourage people to examine their own assumptions regarding social interactions at work, so that they can create more effective connections and uplifting moments, and achieve greater social capital for themselves in the workplace. A Closer Look at Homophily: Why Do People Avoid Talking to Dissimilar Others? Author: Erica Boothby; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania Author: Gus Cooney; Harvard U. Should I Ask Over Zoom, Phone, Email, or In-Person? Communication Channel and Predicted Compliance Author: Vanessa Bohns; Cornell U. Author: Mahdi Roghanizad; Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan U. Gossipers Beware: Gossipers Underestimate the Negative Reputational Consequences of Gossiping Author: Andrew Choi; U. of California, Berkeley Author: Sonya Mishra; U. of California, Berkeley Author: Juliana Schroeder; U. of California, Berkeley The First Laugh: It is Easier Than We Think to Attempt Humor with Strangers Author: Elizabeth Jiang; UCLA Author: Sanford Ely DeVoe; UCLA

  PublisherDOI

• When does being paid an hourly wage make it difficult to be a happy volunteer?

  Journal of Applied Social Psychology · 2021-05-29

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract When people willingly volunteer their time, how does the salience of the opportunity costs of their time influence their experience of the activity? Study 1 uses the American Time Use Survey Well‐Being module to examine whether the subjective experience of happiness while volunteering is influenced by how people are paid and the opportunity costs of their time spent volunteering. Among hourly paid workers for whom there is a salient heuristic for the opportunity costs of time, we found that higher opportunity costs of time as indicated by income and duration of the activity were associated with diminished happiness experienced during volunteering. No differences across income and duration emerged among non‐hourly workers for whom there was not a salient heuristic for the opportunity costs of time. Using a student population who all volunteered for the same charity activity, Study 2 tested whether making the opportunity costs salient caused less happiness to be reported from the activity than those in the control condition. These studies contribute to our understanding of the psychological consequences of thinking about time in terms of money and how it may influence the hedonic experience of activities people choose to undertake in the applied context of volunteering.

  PublisherDOI

• Happiness From Treating the Weekend Like a Vacation

  Sage Journals Data · 2020-01-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Americans are time-poor. They work long hours and leave paid vacation days unused. An analysis of over 200,000 U.S. workers reveals that not prioritizing vacation is linked to lower happiness. Many people, however, do not feel they can take vacation due to financial and temporal constraints. How might people enjoy the emotional benefits of vacation without taking additional time off or spending additional money? Three preregistered experiments tested the effect of simply treating the weekend “like a vacation” (vs. “like a regular weekend”) on subsequent happiness—measured as more positive affect, less negative affect, and greater satisfaction when back at work on Monday. Although unable to definitively rule out the role of demand characteristics, the study results suggest that treating the weekend like a vacation can increase happiness, and exploratory analyses show support for the underlying role of increased attention to the present moment.

  PublisherDOI

• Income Volatility Increases Financial Impatience

  2020 · 6 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Finance
  Publisher

• How income and the economic evaluation of time affect who we socialize with outside of work

  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes · 2020 · 7 citations

  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Demographic economics
  PublisherDOI

• Happiness From Treating the Weekend Like a Vacation

  Social Psychological and Personality Science · 2020 · 16 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Psychology
  • Social psychology
  • Economics

  Americans are time-poor. They work long hours and leave paid vacation days unused. An analysis of over 200,000 U.S. workers reveals that not prioritizing vacation is linked to lower happiness. Many people, however, do not feel they can take vacation due to financial and temporal constraints. How might people enjoy the emotional benefits of vacation without taking additional time off or spending additional money? Three preregistered experiments tested the effect of simply treating the weekend “like a vacation” (vs. “like a regular weekend”) on subsequent happiness—measured as more positive affect, less negative affect, and greater satisfaction when back at work on Monday. Although unable to definitively rule out the role of demand characteristics, the study results suggest that treating the weekend like a vacation can increase happiness, and exploratory analyses show support for the underlying role of increased attention to the present moment.

  PublisherDOI

• The psychological consequence of thinking about time in terms of money

  Current Opinion in Psychology · 2019-01-02 · 11 citations

  review1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jeffrey Pfeffer

  Stanford University

  31 shared

• Julian House

  8 shared

• Sheena S. Iyengar

  7 shared

• Byron Y. Lee

  China Europe International Business School

  6 shared

• C. D. West

  University of Toronto

  4 shared

• Jieun Pai

  Imperial College London

  4 shared

• Chen‐Bo Zhong

  University of Toronto

  4 shared

• Cassie Mogilner

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research (2011)
• Poets and Quants ’ Best 40 Professors Under 40 (2015)