Introducing Dr Daniel Bennett: Our CNH October Feature Story
Can you describe your research interests?
"I’m a cognitive psychologist who studies learning, judgement, and decision making. I study each these things for their own sake, but I also have a strong interest in understanding how they interact with emotion and mood. Lately I have also been spending a lot of my research time thinking about the implications of my research for understanding gambling in the context of real-world products like sports betting and poker machines."
What inspired you to pursue this research topic?
"With respect to gambling specifically: when I moved back to Australia from the USA in 2020, I was floored by the saturation advertising for sports betting that I saw. This got me thinking about the importance of understanding why people gamble and how we can regulate gambling products to make sure they aren’t causing harm to the people who use them.
More broadly, I’m fascinated by the strange things that people do. Our behaviour as humans is so much more interesting and unpredictable than you might expect from some standard theories in psychology and economics. I think it is important to build psychological theories that can explain the seemingly odd things that people do – but if we want our work to matter, those theories have to be rigorous and grounded in meaningful cognitive principles. Meeting that challenge is what makes research work both demanding and fulfilling."
What do you like most about your work?
"In terms of topic: as you might be able to tell, I am very excited about the gambling research that I have been doing lately. I think cognitive psychology has a lot to say in this respect, and it’s exciting to be working in a field that both is theoretically complex (there are a lot of substantive unanswered questions) and has the potential for impact outside academia (if we do our job right, we should be able to help gambling regulators to make products less harmful to the community). In terms of people: a big shout out to everyone in the Cognition & Emotion lab with me. The lab is full of whip-smart, compassionate, kind people – the biggest privilege of my job is to get to work with all of them."
Do you have any exciting projects or news upcoming?
"On a personal note, my partner and I are expecting our first child later this year. I’m looking forward to what I expect will be a crash course in the extremes of cognition and emotion!"