Professor Andrew Colman

See my Personal Homepage for full details, including downloadable versions of all my journal papers.

I grew up in South Africa and taught at the University of Cape Town and Rhodes University before joining the University of Leicester in 1970 as a lecturer.

I was promoted to Reader in 1984 and Professor in 2000. My principal research interests are in judgment and decision making, game theory and experimental games, and psychometrics. I am currently the featured author for science and technology for Oxford University Press and the Oxford English Dictionary specialist subject consultant for psychology.

My books including the bestselling Oxford Dictionary of Psychology are shown on my Amazon Author Page, and my major journal articles are listed on my Google Scholar page.

I have been carrying out research into judgment and decision making since the foundation of the Judgment and Decision Making group in what was then the Department of Psychology in 1972/73. I have held six major research council grants, an NHS grant, and numerous research grants from charities including the British Academy, the Nuffield Foundation, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, BEM Research, and especially the Leicester JDM Endowment Fund. More details on my Personal Homepage.

Here are a few of my recent publications. For full-text version of these and many other journal articles, books, and other publications, see Personal Homepage.

Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Crombie, A. (2024). Persistence or decay of strategic asymmetric dominance in repeated dyadic games? Experimental Economics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-024-09834-0

Colman, A. M. (2024). Team reasoning cannot be viewed as a payoff transformation. Economics and Philosophy, 4, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026626712200027X

Colman, A. M., Stokes, T., & Tarrant, C. (2024). Journals need to provide better guidance for victims of plagiarism. BMJ: British Medical Journal, 384, q226. http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.q226

Colman, A. M. (2023). Behavioural game theory perspectives on cooperation. Global Discourse, 13(3–4), 316–322. https://doi.org/10.1332/204378921X16866755028073

Shteynberg, G., Hirsh, J. B., Wolf, W., Bargh, J. A., Boothby, E., Colman, A. M., Echterhoff, G., & Rossignac-Milon, M. (2023). Theory of collective mind. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 27(11), 1019–1031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2023.06.009

Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., Frosch, C. A., Mangiarulo, M., & Miles, J. N. V. (2022). Does competitive winning increase subsequent cheating? Royal Society Open Science, 9(8), 202197. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202197

Alempaki, D., Colman, A. M., Kölle, F., Loomes, G., & Pulford, B. D. (2022). Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games. Experimental Economics, 25(2), 656-679. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-021-09725-8

Colman, A. M., Krockow, E. M., Chattoe-Brown, E., & Tarrant, C. (2019). Medical prescribing and antibiotic resistance: A game-theoretic analysis of a potentially catastrophic social dilemma. PLOS ONE, 14(4), 1-13. e0215480. 

Colman, A. M., & Gold, N. (2018). Team reasoning: Solving the puzzle of coordination. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(5), 1770-1783. 

Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Krockow, E. M. (2018). Persistent cooperation and gender differences in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma games: Some things never change. Acta Psychologica, 187, 1-8. 

Pulford, B. D., Colman, A. M. Buabang, E. K., & Krockow, E. M. (2018). The persuasive power of knowledge: Testing the confidence heuristic. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(10), 1431-1444. 

Pulford, B. D., Colman, A. M., Lawrence, C. L., & Krockow, E. M. (2017). Reasons for cooperating in repeated interactions: Social value orientations, fuzzy traces, reciprocity, and activity bias. Decision, 4(2), 102-122. 

Rapoport, A., Seale, D. A., & Colman, A. M. (2015). Is tit-for-tat the answer? On the conclusions drawn from Axelrod's tournaments. PLOS ONE, 10(7), 1-11, e0134128.

Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Lawrence, C. L. (2014). Explaining strategic coordination: Cognitive hierarchy theory, strong Stackelberg reasoning, and team reasoning. Decision, 1(1), 35-58.

Colman, A. M., Browning, L., & Pulford, B. D. (2012). Spontaneous similarity discrimination in the evolution of cooperation. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 299, 162-171. 

Colman, A. M., Körner, T. W., Musy, O., & Tazdaït, T. (2011). Mutual support in games: Some properties of Berge equilibria. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 55(2), 166-175.

My teaching has been mainly in judgment and decision making and social psychology.

For more details and downloadable links, see my Personal Homepage.

Sky 1 TV Duck Quacks Don’t Echo 2017 presented by Victoria Coren Mitchell "Winning a game makes people more likely to cheat the next time" (explained the psychological research).

BBC1 TV Rough Justice 1993: "Murder in Mind" presented by John Ware about IRA Corporals murder trial (interviewed).

Channel Four TV Right To Reply 1990: "Satanic Abuse"" presented by Brian Hayes (interviewed).

Central TV ITV1 Central Weekend 1987: "What's in a Name?" (interviewed).

BBC2 TV Horizon 1986: "Nice Guys Finish First" prizewinning programme presented by Richard Dawkins (co-presented).

ITV1 Central News 1986: "Effects of Cartoon Violence" (interviewed).

BBC2 Oxford Road Show 1981: "Police Prejudice" (interviewed).

BBC2 Out of Court 1981: "Police Prejudice" presented by Nick Ross (interviewed).

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Television 1966: "God's Country" presented by Stanley Burke 1966 (interviewed).

BBC Radio 4 Moral Maze 2020: "Isolation" chaired by Michael Buerk (expert witness).

BBC Radio 4 2012 In Our Time "Game Theory" presented by Melvyn Bragg (panel member).

2016 Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA)

2004 Elected Academician of the Social Sciences (AcSS)

1988 Chartered Psychologist (CPsychol)

1984 Elected Fellow (FBPsS) of the British Psychological Society

1979 PhD Psychology Rhodes University

1968 MA Psychology University of Cape Town

1965 BA (Hons) Psychology First Class University of Cape Town

1964 BA Combined Studies with distinction in African Languages University of Cape Town

1961 Hoër Taalbond (bilingual certificate) Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns (South African Academy of Science and Arts)