Congratulations to the recipients of ARC's Discovery Scheme funding

MSPS would like to congratulate Professor Nicholas Haslam and Professor Philip Smith for receiving funding as a part of the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Discovery Projects 2021 scheme. The discovery scheme seeks to “support some of Australia’s best researchers to commence important work to expand Australia’s knowledge base and research capability, providing important outcomes for all Australians," as described by ARC Chief Executive Officer, Professor Sue Thomas.

The MSPS projects which have received funding are:

"Harm inflation: Making sense of concept creep" led by Professor Haslam, receiving $360,000 of funding

This project aims to investigate our culture’s rising preoccupation with harm and clarify its causes and consequences. It will apply innovative computational tools for understanding cultural change which will create new knowledge of how concepts of harm have broadened their meanings in recent decades. It will explore societal and cultural drivers of these changes and their effects on diverse phenomena including help-seeking, over-diagnosis and polarized moral judgment. The project will generate insight into important ongoing social changes and awareness of their positive and negative ramifications. It will provide significant benefits for our understanding of key challenges to mental health and social well-being.

"Cognitive Foundations of Fast Decision Making" led by Professor Smith, receiving $313,000 

This project aims to develop a new theory of fast decision making. In all walks of life, from the sports field to the battlefield, fast and accurate decisions are central to human performance. This project will develop and test mathematical models of the processes involved in making decisions with continuous choice sets and decisions requiring integration of multiple sources of information and decisions in which information varies over time. It is expected to contribute to our understanding of factors that characterise and limit human performance in settings in which fast and accurate decisions are required. It is expected to benefit the design of systems and environments in which safety and efficiency depend on human decision making.