Research Interests

I’m interested in how we form and revise our beliefs about ourselves and the world, and in how this process can derail to produce “pathologies of belief”, ranging from bizarre delusions in clinical settings, to “collective delusions” where thousands or millions of people adopt poorly evidenced beliefs. I also dabble in some other topics, for instance I have some recent projects on swearing (both in the sense of profanity and in the sense of solemn vows).

Background

I grew up in a small town in Western Australia. I studied undergraduate psychology at UWA in Perth and completed a PhD on delusions at Macquarie University in Sydney, with Max Coltheart and Robyn Langdon.

I held postdoctoral positions in Boston (Tufts University, with Daniel Dennett), Zürich (University of Zürich, with Ernst Fehr) and Oxford (University of Oxford, with Harvey Whitehouse). I’ve been at Royal Holloway since 2010, where I head up the Morality and Beliefs Laboratory (MaB-Lab).