My recent and current research projects focus on:
How do people make judgments of likelihood? When there are several possible
outcomes to a situation, how do people go about considering evidence relevant
to those possible outcomes?
How do motivations influence one's optimism about experiencing positive and
negative events?
How do comparisons (both social and nonsocial) affect people's perceptions of
an event's likelihood. How do such comparisons affect perceptions of personal
vulnerability to negative events?
What is the best way to assess someone's perceptions of likelihood (or risk
or personal vulnerability)? Are numeric measures of subjective probability adequate,
or do verbal or other nonnumeric measure hold important advantages over subjective
probability measures?
In competitive situations, how do people interpret the influence of situational
factors on their likelihood of succeeding? Do they assume that a difficult situation
will be harder for themselves than it will be for others?
What is the role of egocentrism in people's evaluations of how well a treatment
(e.g., alternative medicine, listening to music) works for other people?
What are the nonmotivated biases that influence people's judgments about how
their abilities compare to those of others? What nonmotivated biases influence
nonsocial judgments, such as how pleasant one sofa is compared to another?
Click
here for a list of my publications.