The project

About the Lab

A behavioral finance research project built in the open. It connects original experiments, a podcast, market-data analysis, and public workshops around a single question.

Origin

Where this started

The Pressure Premium Lab began with a simple observation: the same person can make very different decisions depending on the pressure they are under. The project set out to take that intuition seriously: to define it, measure it, and test how far it travels from the individual to the market.

Rather than a single paper, it is built as a platform: experiments produce the evidence, the podcast and briefs interpret it, and workshops carry it back to the people it is about.

Why behavioral finance?

Markets are made of decisions, and decisions are made by people. Behavioral finance is where the psychology of judgment meets the data of markets, the right vantage point for studying how stress changes outcomes.

Why pressure?

Pressure is everywhere decisions matter most: trading floors, leadership calls, exam halls, match points. It is also something you can manipulate cleanly in an experiment, which makes it a rare bridge between lived experience and measurable data.

Why a public platform?

Research, media, and education reinforce each other. Experiments generate findings, the podcast pressure-tests them in conversation, and workshops put them in front of the people they describe.

Honest scope

What this is and isn't trying to prove

The ambition is real, and so are the limits. Keeping both visible is part of doing the work credibly.

Trying to show

That pressure changes individual financial decisions in measurable, structured ways.
That those distortions line up with named biases: loss aversion, herding, miscalibration.
That the same framework is a useful lens on leadership and market behavior.

Not claiming

That stress causes market volatility; the market link stays exploratory, not proven.
That any result is a clinical, psychological, or financial assessment.
That a school-based sample generalizes to all populations or to real markets.

Built in public

This site is published while the research is still underway. Planned work is labeled as planned, demo figures are labeled as demo, and statuses update as each phase completes. Showing the scaffolding is deliberate. It is what makes the finished results trustworthy.

Founder

Sami Muhtadie

Sami Muhtadie is a student interested in behavioral economics, financial markets, and decision-making under pressure. This project is his attempt to test a real question with real methods: designing the experiments, recording the conversations, and writing up what the data does and doesn’t support.

Start with the framework

Roadmap

Project timeline

A March-to-August roadmap, built in phases. Status updates as each phase completes.

March to early Aprilcomplete
Foundation Setup & Branding
- Finalize research questions
- Build website skeleton
- Design the Pressure Premium model
- Record trial episode
- Draft research prospectus
Mid to late Aprilactive
Experiment Design & Launch
- Launch Risk Under Pressure study
- Test control, time pressure, social evaluation, and loss-framing conditions
- Publish first podcast episode
- Embed experiment on website
Early to mid-Mayupcoming
Identity & Leadership Study
- Design identity and leadership primes
- Measure risk tolerance, confidence calibration, and herding
- Publish podcast episodes on identity and leadership
- Draft first analysis
Mid-May to mid-Juneupcoming
Market Volatility Study
- Explore VIX, sector volatility, Google Trends, and event windows
- Build charts for the website
- Draft volatility paper or op-ed
Mid-June to mid-Julyupcoming
Dashboard & Website Polish
- Build the interactive dashboard
- Add the Behavioral Breakdown archive
- Add the Pressure Test feature
- Publish working paper and briefs
Late July to mid-Augustupcoming
Workshop & Final Delivery
- Run the in-person workshop
- Collect feedback
- Publish final materials
- Finalize site and final deliverables