She conducts research on judgment and decision making, consumer behavior, signaling through brands, social media, political consumption, moral psychology, and digital marketing. Prior to joining the Georgetown McDonough faculty, Paharia served as the research director for the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. She also spent three years on the founding team at Creative Commons serving as assistant and executive director, after working at McKinsey as an associate consultant. She has cofounded several community-oriented social networking sites in education, research, and music including Peer 2 Peer University (p2pu.org), Acawiki.org, and ccmixter.org.