Professor Ryan McKay

Research Interests

I'm interested in how we form and revise beliefs. Does God exist? Are vaccines safe? Will I live a long life? Is the COVID pandemic a cover for the health consequences of 5G? Our beliefs about these and many other questions seem to be biased in certain ways – and in extreme cases we may adopt bizarre delusional beliefs about reality. My research aims to uncover the psychological, social and evolutionary causes and consequences of these biases.

Background

I grew up in a small town in Western Australia. I studied undergraduate psychology at UWA in Perth and completed my PhD at Macquarie University in Sydney. I did postdoctoral work in Boston (Tufts University), Belfast (Queen’s University), Zürich (University of Zürich) and Oxford (University of Oxford). I also worked for a while as a clinical neuropsychologist at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in Queen Square, London, and as a lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, New South Wales. I’ve been at Royal Holloway since 2010, where I head up the Morality and Beliefs Lab (MaB-Lab).

I'm also a member of the COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC).