Decision Making

Why do people make the decisions that they do? What influences these decisions? How and why do social norms affect decision making and how can we leverage this? How can we best combat “fake news” and misinformation campaigns?

In this lab we are particularly interested in how and why social norms affect behaviour. We have found most of these existing theories to be unsatisfactory and are currently developing a comprehensive account of how social norms influence decision making.

Selected Journal Articles

• Pryor, C, Pefors, A, Howe, PDL (In press). Conformity to the descriptive norms of people with opposing political or social beliefs. PLOS ONE.
• Pryor, C, Perfors, A & Howe, PDL(2019). Even arbitrary norms influence moral decision-making. Nature Human Behaviour, 3(1), 57. [PDF]
• Liew, SX, Howe PDL, Little DR (2016). The appropriacy of averaging in the study of context effects. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review. 23(5):1639-1646. [PDF]
• Landes TL, Kashima Y, Howe PDL (2016) Investigating the effect of gaze cues and emotional expressions on the affective evaluations of unfamiliar faces. PLOS ONE 11(9):24. [PDF]