Judgement and Decision Making

Current research projects within the group include:

• The role of confidence cues on deception in competitive dyadic situations (Colman, Pulford, Mangiarulo).
• Individual and dyadic moral dilemmas, judging what others will do in morally difficult situations (Pulford).
• Understanding strategic reasoning in dyadic competitive and cooperative games (Colman, Pulford, Krockow).
• Research on online adolescent risk taking, working with the educational charity Warning Zone (Frosch, Pulford).
• Health-related decision making - perceptions of risks and uncertainty underlying medical treatment choices and antibiotic prescribing (Krockow).

• Advice giving and taking
• Agency and structure effects on beliefs and behaviour
• Agent-based simulation
• Ambiguity aversion
• Artificial Intelligence (trust and cooperation)
• Bargaining games and verifiable information
• Behavioural economics
• Causal and counterfactual thinking in children and adults
• Centipede games
• Communication and perception of confidence
• Consumption and regulation
• Cooperation
• Decidability and undecidability
• Emotions and regulation
• Evolution of cooperation
• Experimental games
• Frugal heuristics in judgment and decision making
• Game theory
• Mental accounting
• Moral judgment
• Overconfidence
• Quantum decision theory
• Retail crime and loss prevention
• Social decisions: networks and innovations
• Team reasoning

The objective of the endowment is to provide funds to promote judgment and decision making research and to encourage the continuance of such research in the School of Psychology by providing support for research in this field.

The funds may be spent on research assistance, post graduate studentships, graduate teaching assistants, subject or participant payments, publication costs, travel to publicise research findings, or other research requirements, but only in the area of judgment and decision making and not on any other research area.

Applications for funding outlining the proposed research and costs must sent to the head of the School of Psychology Judgment and Decision Making research group (currently Dr Briony Pulford), from whom the application form can be obtained, six to twelve months prior to the ending of any currently supported research project(s) for consideration by the academic staff of the group. When an application for funding is received, the head of the Judgment and Decision Making research group at his or her absolute discretion will establish a suitable procedure, including consultation outside the group if required, to decide whether or not to fund the proposed research.

The funds do not need to spent every year but must never remain unspent for more than three consecutive years, and if at any time there is no suitable research in judgment and decision making taking place in the School of Psychology at the University of Leicester, then the funds should be spent in collaboration with another university, to which end information about the endowment shall be advertised and/or circulated to appropriate psychology departments at other universities and used to support research in judgment and decision making at those locations until such time as it can support research in judgment and decision making in the School of Psychology at the University of Leicester.

You can donate towards this research through JustGiving. 

Awards made

• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M., Frosch, C.A. and Krockow, E.M. (2021-2024) £63,811 (£319,389 FEC) awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to study ‘Communication, deception, and iterated decisions under bounded rationality’
• The inaugural award from the Endowment was £100,000, awarded to B. D. Pulford and A. M. Colman to study “Coordination, Judgment, and Decision Making”, starting on 01 October 2011, ending 30 September 2016 (Ref: RM43G0176). Download PDF of the report (PDF, 108kb)
• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M. and Frosch, C.A. (2016-2018) £26,039 (£134,293 FEC) awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to study ‘Comparisons, Confidence, and Causality in Decision Making’. (Ref: RM56J0001) Download PDF of the report (PDF, 512kb)
• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M. and Frosch, C.A. (2016-2021) £10,000 awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to fund the ‘LJDME Sluckin Studentship Award’.
• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M., and Frosch, C.A. (2019-2021) £39,064 (£214,045 FEC) awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to study ‘Confidence and Reasoning in Decisions and Games’.
• Pulford, A. M. Colman and C. A. Frosch (2019-2024) £44,795 awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment for the ‘LJDME Intern Programme’.

Selected research papers

• Aerts, D., d’Hooghe, B., and Haven, E. (2010). Quantum experimental data in psychology and economics. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 49(12), 2971-2990.
• al-Nowaihi, A., and Dhami, S. (2015). Evidential Equilibria: Heuristics and Biases in Static Games of Complete Information. Games, 6, 637-677.
• al-Nowaihi, A., and Dhami, S. (2012). Hyperbolic Punishment Functions. Review of Law and Economics, 8(3), 759-787.
• Álvarez-Mozos, M., Hellman, Z., and Winter, E. (2013). Spectrum value for coalitional games. Games and Economic Behavior Elsevier, 82, 132-142.
• Beaman, C.P., Smith, P. T., Frosch, C.A., and McCloy, R. (2010). Less-is-more effects without the recognition heuristic. Judgment and Decision Making, 5, 258-271.
• Beck, A. (2011). Self-scan checkouts and retail loss: Understanding the risk and minimising the yhreat. Security Journal, 24(3), 199-215.
• Beck, A., and Palmer W. (2011). The importance of visual situational cues and difficulty of removal in creating deterrence: The limitations of electronic article surveillance source tagging in the retail environment. Journal of Applied Security Research, 6(1), 110-123.
• Bolger, F., Pulford, B. D., and Colman, A. M. (2008). Market entry decisions: Effects of absolute and relative confidence. Experimental Psychology, 55(2), 113-120.
• Chattoe-Brown, E. (2009). The Social transmission of choice: A simulation with applications to hegemonic discourse. Mind and Society, 8(2), 193-207.
• Chattoe-Brown, E. (2012). Combining ethnography and game theory using simulation: A critique and development of "Can Norms Account for Strategic Interaction?" by S. Gezelius, Sociology, 46(2), 339-353.
• Chattoe-Brown, E. (2014). Using agent based modelling to integrate data on attitude change. Sociological Research Online, 19(1).
• Chattoe-Brown, E. (2013). Why sociology should use agent based modelling. Sociological Research Online, 18(3).
• Chattoe, E. and Gilbert, N. (2001). Understanding consumption: What interviews with retired households can reveal about budgetary decisions. Sociological Research Online, 6(3), November.
• Coleman, A. A., Colman, A. M., and Thomas, R. M. (1990). Cooperation without awareness: A multiperson generalization of the minimal social situation. Behavioral Science, 35, 115-121.
• Colman, A. M., Browning, L., and 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., and Tazdaït, T. (2011). Mutual support in games: Some properties of Berge equilibria. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 55, 166-175.For more publications or full CV, use the panel on the left.
• Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., and Krockow, E. M. (2018). Persistent cooperation and gender differences in repeated prisoner’s dilemma games: Some things never change. Acta Psychologica, (187), 1–8.
• Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., and Lawrence, C. L. (2014). Explaining strategic coordination: Cognitive hierarchy theory, strong Stackelberg reasoning, and team reasoning. Decision, 1, 35-58.
• Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., Omtzigt, D., and al-Nowaihi, A. (2010). Learning to cooperate without awareness in multiplayer minimal social situations. Cognitive Psychology, 61, 201-227.
• Dambacher, M., and Hübner, R. (2013). Investigating the speed-accuracy tradeoff: Better use deadlines or response signals? Behavior Research Methods, 45, 702-717.
• Dambacher, M., and Hübner, R. (2015). Time pressure affects the efficiency of early perceptual processing in decisions under conflict. Psychological Research, 79, 83-94.
• Dambacher, M., Hübner, R., and Schlösser, J. (2011). Monetary incentives in speeded perceptual decision: Effects of penalizing errors versus slow responses. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, 248, 1-12.
• David, M., Rohloff, A., Petley, J. and Hughes, J. (2011). The idea of moral panic: Ten dimensions of dispute. Crime, Media, Culture, 7(3), 215–228.
• Dhami, S., and al-Nowaihi, A. (2013). An extension of the Becker Proposition to non-expected utility theory. Mathematical Social Sciences, 65(1) 10-20.
• Dhami, S., and al-Nowaihi, A. (2010). The existence of a Condorcet winner when voters have other regarding preferences. Journal of Public Economic Theory, 12(5), 897-922.
• Dzhafarov, E., Haven, E., Khrennikov, A., and Sozzo, S. (2015). Editors of the Special issue: ‘Quantum Theory: from Foundations to Technologies’. Journal of Mathematical Psychology. Forthcoming.
• Eso, P., and Wallace, C. (2014). Information and evidence in bargaining. Economic Theory Bulletin, 2(1), 23-32.
• Frosch, C.A., Beaman, C.P. and McCloy, R. (2007). A little learning is a dangerous thing: An experimental demonstration of ignorance-driven inference. ,The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 6(10), 1329-1336.
• Frosch, C.A. and Byrne, R.M.J. (2012). Causal conditionals and counterfactuals. Acta Psychologica. 141, 54-66.
• Frosch, C. A., McCormack, T., Lagnado, D. A. and Burns, P. (2012). Are Causal Structure and Intervention Judgments Inextricably Linked? A Developmental Study. Cognitive Science. 36, 261-285.
• Frosch, C. A. and Johnson-Laird, P. N. (2011). Is everyday causation deterministic or probabilistic? Acta Psychologica. 137, 280 - 291.
• Gold, N., Colman, A. M., and Pulford, B. D. (2014). Cultural differences in responses to real-life and hypothetical trolley problems. Judgment and Decision Making, 9(1), 65-76.
• Gold, N., Pulford, B. D., and Colman, A. M. (2013). Your money or your life: Comparing judgments in trolley problems involving economic and emotional harms, injury and death. Economics and Philosophy, 29, 213-233.
• Gold, N, Pulford, B. D., and Colman, A. M. (2015). Do as I say, don’t do as I do: Differences in moral judgments do not translate into differences in decisions in real-life trolley problems. Journal of Economic Psychology, 47, 50–61.
• Griffiths, A. W., Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Taylor, P. J., and Tai, S. (2014). The prospective role of defeat and entrapment in depression and anxiety: A 12-month longitudinal study. Psychiatry Research, 216, 52-59.
• Hargreaves Heap, S., Arjona, D. R., and Sugden, R. (2014). How portable is Level-0 behaviour? A test of Level-k theory in games with non-neutral frames. Econometrica 82, 3,1133-1151.
• Haven E. (2005). The financial relevance of fuzzy stochastic dominance: A brief note. Fuzzy Sets and Systems 15(3), 467-473.
• Haven, E. (2008). Private Information and the ‘Information function. Theory and Decision, 64(2-3), 193-228.
• Haven, E., and Khrennikov, A. (2013). Quantum-like tunnelling and levels of arbitrage. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 52, 4083-4099.
• Hughes, J. (2014). E-cigarettes and the "civilising" of smoking. Cambio, 4(7), 169–181.
• Janczyk, M., Dambacher, M., Bieleke, M., and Gollwitzer, P. M. (2015). The benefit of no choice: Goal-directed plans enhance perceptual processing. Psychological Research, 79, 206-220.
• Jones, S. A. M., and Thomas, R. M. (2013). Formal languages, word problems of groups and decidability. In P. A. Abdulla and I. Potapov (Eds.), Reachability problems (LNCS 8169, pp. , 146-158). Uppsala, Sweden: Springer-Verlag.
• Jugureanu, A., Hughes, J., and Hughes, K. (2014). Towards a developmental sociology of happiness. Sociological Research Online, 19(2), 2.
• King, S. A. (1999). Chance, choice and calculation in the process of getting married. International Review of Social History, 44, 69-76.
• King, S. A., and Shephard, M. (2012). Courtship and the remarrying man in late-Victorian England. Journal of Family History, 37, 319-40.
• Krockow, E. M., Colman, A. M., and Pulford, B. D. (2016a). Cooperation in repeated interactions: A systematic review of Centipede game experiments, 1992–2016. European Review of Social Psychology, 27(1), 231–282.
• Krockow, E. M., Pulford, B. D., and Colman, A. M. (2015). Competitive Centipede games: Zero-end payoffs and payoff inequality deter reciprocal cooperation. Games, 6(3), 262–272.
• Lakin, S. R., and Thomas, R. M. (2004). Context-sensitive decision problems in groups. In C. S. Calude, E. Calude, and M. J. Dinneen (Eds.), Developments in language theory ( LNCS 3340, pp. , 296-307). Auckland, New Zealand: Springer-Verlag.
• Lakin, S. R., and Thomas, R. M. (2009). Complexity classes and word problems of groups. Groups, Complexity and Cryptography 1, 261-273.
• McCloy, R., Beaman, C.P., Frosch, C.A., and Goddard, K. (2010). Fast and frugal framing effects. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition. 36(4), 1043-1052.
• Myatt, D., and Wallace, C. (2008). An evolutionary analysis of the volunteer's dilemma. Games and Economic Behavior, 62(1), 67-76.
• Myatt, D., and Wallace, C. (2009). "Evolution, teamwork and collective action: Production targets in the private provision of public goods. The Economic Journal, 119(534), 61-90.
• Pulford, B. D. (2009). Is luck on my side? Optimism, pessimism, and ambiguity aversion. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(6), 1079-1087.
• Pulford, B. D., and Colman, A. M. (2008). Size doesn't really matter: Ambiguity aversion in Ellsberg urns with few balls. Experimental Psychology, 55(1), 31-37.
• Pulford, B. D., Colman, A. M., Buabang, E. K., and Krockow, E. M. (2018). The persuasive power of knowledge: Testing the confidence heuristic. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 
• Pulford, B. D., Colman, A. M., Lawrence, C. L., and Krockow, E. M. (2017). Reasons for cooperating in repeated interactions: Social value orientations, fuzzy traces, reciprocity, and activity bias. Decision, 4(2), 102–122.
• Pulford, B. D., Colman, A. M., and Loomes, G. (2018). Incentive magnitude effects in experimental games: Bigger is not necessarily better. Games, 9(1), 4.
• Pulford, B. D., Krockow, E. M., Colman, A. M., and Lawrence, C. L. (2016). Social value induction and cooperation in the Centipede game. PLoS ONE, 11(3), 1–21, e0152352.
• Rapoport, A., Seale, D. A., and Colman, A. M. (2015). Is tit-for-tat the answer? On the conclusions drawn from Axelrod’s tournaments. PLOS ONE, 10(7), e0134128.
• van Damme, E., Binmore, K. G.. Roth, A., Samuelson, L., Winter, E., Bolton, G. E, Ockenfels, A., Dufwenberg, M., Kirchsteiger, G., Gneezy, U., and Kocher, M. G. (2014). How Werner Güth's ultimatum game shaped our understanding of social behaviour. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 108, 292-318.
• Wallace, C., and Young, H. P. (2015). Stochastic evolutionary game dynamics. In H. P. Young and S. Zamir (Eds), The Handbook of Game Theory (Vol. 4, chap. 6, pp. 327-380). North Holland, Amsterdam.
• Winter, E. (2009). Incentive reversal. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 1(2), pages 133-147.
• Ziegelmeyer. A., Koessler, F., Bracht, J., and Winter, E. (2010). Fragility of information cascades: An experimental study using elicited beliefs. Experimental Economics, 13(2), 121-145.

• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M., Frosch, C.A. & Krockow, E.M. (2021-2024) £63,811 (£319,389 FEC) awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to study ‘Communication, deception, and iterated decisions under bounded rationality’
• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M., and Frosch, C.A.  (2019-2021) £39,064 (£214,045 FEC) awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to study "Confidence and Reasoning in Decisions and Games".
• Cole, A.N., Karton, J.D., Flood, J., Chattoe-Brown, E., Ortolani, P. and Ayton, P.  (2018-2023) £812,301 awarded by the ESRC to study “The Social and Psychological Underpinnings of Commercial Arbitration in Europe”.
• Frosch, C.A. (2018-2019) £3,500 (£15,962 FEC) awarded by the Experimental Psychology Society to study "Maths and Reasoning Ability".
• Tarrant, C., Colman, A. M., Chattoe-Brown, E., Jenkins, D., Perera, N., and Mehtar, S. £205,582 (£246,677 FEC) awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council to study "Antimicrobial resistance as a social dilemma: Implications for developing interventions to reduce the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics for acute medical patients in hospital settings internationally".
• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M. and Frosch, C.A. (2016-2021) £10,000 awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to fund the "LJDME Sluckin Studentship Award".
• Pulford, B.D., Colman, A.M. and Frosch, C.A. (2016-2018) £26,039 (£134,293 FEC) awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment to study "Comparisons, Confidence, and Causality in Decision Making".
• Frosch, C. A., (2013-2014). £2,500 awarded by the Experimental Psychology Society, Small Grants Scheme to study “Counterfactual Thinking and Regulatory Focus in Self/Other Decision Making”
• Pulford, B. D. and Colman A.M. (2011-2016). £100,000 awarded by the Leicester Judgment and Decision Making Endowment Fund for research into "Coordination, Judgment, and Decision Making".
• Gold, N., Colman, A. M., and Pulford, B. D. (2010–12). £151,216 awarded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a study of “Framing Effects in Ethical Dilemmas”. (Grant No. AH/H001158/1)
• Dambacher, M. (2011-2012). €113,000 awarded by the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz, Germany for the project "Towards a time course of decision making: Incentive-based effects on electrophysiological correlates of selective attention"
• Baker, R., Mellon, J., Colman, A. M., Steward, W., Kockelbergh, R., Sinfield, P., Tarrant, C., Crosbee, L., and Sproston, K. (2004-2007). £347,291 awarded by the NHS Service Delivery and Organisation National R&D Programme for research into “Prostate Cancer Care: Improving Measures of Patient Experience".
• Colman, A. M., and Pulford, B. D. (2009). £7,272 awarded by the Nuffield Foundation Social Sciences Small Grants Scheme for a study of “Evolution of Cooperation Through Similarity Recognition”.
• Gilbert, N., and Chattoe-Brown, E. (2008-2011). £1.3m awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council for "SIMIAN (Simulation Innovation: a Node)".
• Colman, A. M. (2005-2006). £2,600 awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh to study “Evolution of Cooperation Through Coordinated Turn-Taking”.
• Colman, A. M., and Al-Nowaihi, A. (2004-2005). £12,054 awarded by the British Academy Larger Research Grants Scheme to study “Cooperation in Multi-Player Minimal Social Situations: An Experimental Investigation”.
• Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., and Bolger, F. (2003-2005).£121,563 awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council for research into “Confidence in Interactive Decisions”.
• Frosch, C. A. (2007). £85,556.80 (£104,264 FEC) awarded by the Economic and Social Research Council for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship on "Cognitive processes in causal and counterfactual thinking".
• Pulford, B. D. (2002-2005). £21,000 awarded by the University of Wolverhampton Studentship Fund for a postgraduate studentship on "The Communication and Influence of Confidence and Uncertainty".
• Washington, R. Downing. T. E., Haxeltine, A., Bithell, M., New, M., and Chattoe, E. (2002-2005). £205,000 awarded by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.

Andrew has research interests in judgment and decision making, game theory, experimental games, cooperative reasoning, evolution of cooperation, and psychometrics.

• Find out more about Professor Andrew Colman

Caren is a cognitive psychologist with expertise in judgment, decision making, thinking and reasoning. She uses experimental methods to study how adults and children think. One particular focus is on thinking about how things could have turned out differently (counterfactual thinking) and how these thoughts relate to past and future behaviour and emotions.

• Find out more about Dr Caren Frosch

Eva is a health decision researcher. Using mixed-methods designs, she studies medical decision making including treatment choices. For example, she has investigated doctors’ antibiotic prescribing choices and medical advice giving through in-depth interviews with frontline hospital staff in different countries. She is also interested in health risk communication about (e.g., about COVID-19 and antibiotic resistance), and how this may contribute to behaviour change. This line of research includes investigations into impactful disease terminology and the use of figurate language in public health information.

• Find out more about Dr Eva Krockow

My interests are in overconfidence, cooperation, team reasoning, game theory, trust, moral judgment, and ambiguity aversion. My PhD was concerned with overconfidence in judgements, but since then I have been working on how people perceive and interpret confidence and uncertainty in communication and how this affects decision making. This has influenced my recent research into advice taking and advice giving. I am also interested in how people trust advice and information from artificial intelligence.

• Find out more about Dr Briony Pulford

• Dr Lindsay Browning (Honorary Fellow) 2020-2021 working with Dr Briony Pulford
• Dr Marta Mangiarulo (Research Assistant) working with Dr Briony Pulford, Professor Andrew Colman, and Dr Caren Frosch.

• Maryam Bathaei Javareshk (PhD student)
• Benoît Béchard (visiting student, 2019)
• Dhipteen Kaur Braich (PhD student)
• Jody Faro (PhD student)
• Jesica Gomez-Sanchez (visiting student 2019)
• Checheng Ma (visiting student, 2019)
• Jodi Withers (PhD student)

• Fergus Bolger (University of Durham)
• Fiona Butcher (Dstl)
• Raphael Gillett (Retired)
• Yongyu Guo (Central China Normal University)
• David Hargreaves (Roehampton University)
• Gareth Jones (Deighton Consultants)
• Catherine Lawrence (University of Bangor)
• Clare Mapplebeck (Clinical psychologist)
• Diana Pinto (University of Leicester)
• Eike Buabang (University of Leiden)
• Jo Rose (University of Bristol)
• Daniela Rudloff (Daniela Aidley) (University of Leicester)
• Wladek Sluckin (deceased)
• Jonathan Stirk (University of Nottingham)
• Carolyn Tarrant (University of Leicester)
• Malcolm Walley (University of Northampton)

• Ali al-Nowaihi (University of Leicester)
• Michael Bacharach (University of Oxford, deceased)
• Phil Beaman (University of Reading)
• Lindsay Browning (Honorary Visiting Fellow)
• Ruth Byrne (Trinity College Dublin)
• Sanjit Dhami (University of Leicester)
• Mary Dixon-Woods (University of Leicester)
• Suzanne Egan (Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)
• Natalie Gold (University of Oxford)
• Emmanuel Haven (University of Leicester)
• Phil Johnson-Laird (Princeton University)
• Tom W. Körner (University of Cambridge)
• David Lagnado (University College London)
• Graham Loomes (the University of Warwick)
• Hsin-Hsien Liu (Southern Taiwan University)
• Rachel McCloy (University of Reading)
• Gloria Moss (University of Buckingham)
• Teresa McCormack (Queen’s University Belfast)
• Olivier Musy (Université Paris Ouest Nanterre, France)
• David Omtzigt (Yatedo, Nijmegen, The Netherlands)
• Ian M. Pountney (University of Birmingham, deceased)
• Amnon Rapoport (University of Arizona and University of California, Riverside)
• Eldar Shafir (Princeton University)
• Wladek Sluckin (University of Leicester, deceased)
• Tim Stokes (University of Birmingham)
• Masanori Takezawa (Hokkaido University, Japan)
• Tarik Tazdaït (CNRS-EHESS-CIRED, France)
• Rick Thomas (University of Leicester)