Peter Ayton

“Undesirable psychological influences on understanding, communicating & deciding about risks”

Peter Ayton is the  Director in Centre for Decision Research at the University of Leeds, UK. Peter previously worked at City, University of London, where he also served as Head of the Psychology Department, Associate Dean for Research and Deputy Dean of Social Sciences. He has been a visiting scholar at Princeton University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of California Los Angeles, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, the University of Mannheim, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Bilkent University, Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University and INSEAD.

His research is concerned with the experimental investigation of human judgement – especially risk perception and decision-making under uncertainty and ambiguity. His publications frequently address applied issues including the impact of computerised advice on radiologists’ cancer screening decisions; magistrates’ bail decision-making; effect of personality and emotion on stock traders’ decisions, optimistic bias in convicted prisoners, procrastination in anaesthetists’ decision-making and the misconceptions of professional footballers. He has also published papers investigating cognitive illusions such as the sunk cost fallacy, the gambler’s fallacy, the hot hand fallacy and overconfidence. His books include “Judgmental Forecasting” (1987); “Subjective Probability” (1994) and “Myths and Facts about Football” (2008).