Jona M. Ragogna

pronounced rah-GONE-yah

I'm a UWC Davis Scholar at Macalester College broadly interested in motivation, how people think, and how that can still change in adulthood. Before that, I lived in Denmark during a gap year making videos, and still before that, I completed the International Baccalaureate at the Mahindra United World College of India. I'll be joining St Catz at the University of Oxford as a visiting student for spring 2027.

I've lived in: Austria → India → Denmark → Germany → United States → United Kingdom (next)

You can find my CV as a PDF. Reach out via: jragogna [at] macalester [dot] edu. I am also on ORCID and LinkedIn.

Research

Projects I am currently working on:

• At Macalester
  • Meaning, Effort, and Need for Cognition. Does the perceived meaningfulness of a task increase willingness to exert cognitive effort on it, and does need for cognition moderate this relationship?
  • Ostracism and Meaning in Life. Does brief ostracism lower meaning in life, and does it lower some facets of meaning more than others? [preregistration]
• Outside of Macalester
  • Crisis of Meaning and Conspiracy Belief. Do crises of meaning increase vulnerability to conspiracy beliefs, and do faith, agnosticism, or atheism moderate that link?
  • The ‘Good Life’ Data Challenge. What predicts whether people experience their lives as happy, meaningful, and psychologically rich over 25 years? [OSF preregistration]

Research Assistantships

Labs I have worked in:

• Morality and Social Cognition Lab. I've been working in Steve Guglielmo's lab at Macalester since January 2026. We are currently working on a study of moral leadership and the black sheep effect.
• Early Social Thinkers Lab. I got to spend Jun-Aug 2026 in Lin Bian's lab at UChicago working on their projects studying cognitive development and brilliance beliefs.

Jona M. Ragogna - Modified: 09/29/2026