Sabrina Yufang Sun, Chair of Financial Markets and Financial Instiutions: Socio-psychological factors in the financial markets (February 2025)

Sabrina Yufang Sun is a doctoral candidate in the Finance Area at the University of Mannheim. Before coming to Germany, she completed her Bachelor's degrees in Psychology, Mathematics and Germanic Studies at Indiana University Bloomington and worked as an experimental social psychologist at Harvard University.

What is your current research topic?

My current research focuses on the role of socio-psychological factors in financial markets, in particular political attitudes, moral preferences and cultural beliefs.

For those who have not yet delved deeply into the topic of Data Science: How would you explain to a child what you are working on?

Imagine that the financial market is like a big playground where people with different opinions and values come together. I study how these different opinions – for example, about what is right and wrong or how best to handle money – influence investment decisions. It's a bit like trying to understand why your friends handle their pocket money differently depending on what they've learned from home.

Everyone is talking about data science – how would you describe the importance of the topic for yourself in three words?

Mining data treasures intelligently

What points of contact does your work have with data science? Which methods do you already use and which would be interesting for you in the future?

I currently use large language models for various text-related tasks, from categorizing online reviews to generating ideas. In the future, I would like to use the generative nature of modern AI tools to reverse-engineer human cognition in financial markets.

What is the value of data science for your work? Would your research even be possible without data science?

As an empirical researcher, data science is already so integrated into my daily workflow that research without data science tools such as generative AI is almost unimaginable. Without the help of GPT-4, I would probably only be half as productive.

What development opportunities do you see for the topic of data science in relation to your specialist area?

In the field of finance, we have observed a rapidly increasing number of empirical papers using generative AI tools since 2023. I am particularly looking forward to further research on how these AI tools change investment behavior and business decisions.

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