Peter McGraw

Peter McGraw is an American professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder. In 2015, McGraw created a live comedy game show—"Funny or True?"—which pits scientists against comedians to see who has the best blend of brains and funny bone. In 2018, McGraw launched a podcast "I'm not joking" that looks at the lives of comedians, improvisers, comedy writers, and other funny people from business, science, and the arts. In 2020, McGraw published his second book, Shtick to Business: What the Masters of Comedy can Teach You about Breaking Rules, Being Fearless, and Building a Serious Career.

Academic career McGraw received his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University in 2002, at which time he pursued a post-doc at Princeton University with Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman. In 2004, he joined the faculty at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder. In 2008, he received an appointment (courtesy) in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. At the University of Colorado's Leeds School of Business, he teaches courses in marketing management and behavioral economics. He also teaches for executive MBA programs at London Business School and the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego. He directs the Humor Research Lab (HuRL) and co-directs a virtual research lab, the Moral Research Lab (MoRL) with Daniel Bartels.

In 2007, McGraw was named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar. The two maintained multiple blogs about their adventures on Wired, Huffington Post, and Psychology Today.

Solo-The Single Persons’ Guide to a Remarkable Life In December 2019, McGraw launched his second podcast called "Solo-The Single Person’s Guide to a Remarkable Life". The podcast takes a positive view of single living. He interviews singles living remarkable lives and experts who provide advice to listeners. Notable guests include Kristin Newman, Neal Brennan, and Alonzo Bodden.

Selected publications Bartels, D. M., Bauman, C.W., Cushman, F.A., Pizarro, D.A., & McGraw, A.P., (Forthcoming), Moral judgment and decision making. In G. Keren & G. Wu (Eds.) The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making. Chichester, UK: Wiley. McGraw, A.P. & Warren, C. (2014). Benign violation theory. In S. Attardo (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Humor Studies, Vol. 1 (pp. 75–77) Sage Publications. McGraw, A.P., Williams, L.T., & Warren, C. (2014). The rise and fall of humor: Psychological distance modulates humorous responses to tragedy. Social Psychology and Personality Science5, 566–572. McGraw, A.P., Warren, C., Williams, L., & Leonard, B., (2012). Too close for comfort, or too far to care? Finding humor in distant tragedies and close mishaps. Psychological Science, 25, 1215 - 1223.