Dr Adam Harris
Current position
Lecturer in Cognitive, Perceptual & Brain Sciences, University College London
Research Interests
My research interests are broad, but are mostly within the judgment part of judgment and decision making. Within this area, I am concerned with issues relating to the effect of outcome utility (the goodness or badness of an event) on people's judgments pertaining to how likely they think that event is to occur (its probability). This research has broad implications in the domain of risk perception and communication. I am also interested in how people reason with evidence, including the effect of the coherence of a set of evidence on people's belief updating. This work is related to other research interests in argumentation.
Current Students
Contact
Adam Harris
Department of Cognitive, Perceptual, and Brain Sciences
University College London, UK
26, Bedford Way
WC1H 0AP, UK
E-mail: adam.harris [at] ucl.ac.uk
Publications
Notice: Some of the documents listed below are available for downloading. These have been provided as a means to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work on a noncommercial basis. Copyright and all rights therein are maintained by the authors or by other copyright holders, notwithstanding that they have offered their works here electronically. It is understood that all persons copying this information will adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These works may not be re-posted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.
Forthcoming
Harris, A. J. L., Corner, A., & Hahn, U. (in press). James is polite and punctual (and useless): A Bayesian formalization of faint praise. Thinking and Reasoning.[doc]
Harris, A. J. L., Shah, P., Catmur, C., Bird, G., & Hahn, U. (in press). Autism, optimism and positive events: Evidence against a general optimistic bias. In M. Knauff, M. Pauen, N. Sebanz, & I. Wachsmuth (Eds.), Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.[pdf]
2013
Hahn, U., Harris, A. J. L., & Oaksford, M. (2013). Rational argument, rational inference. Argument and Computation, 4, 21-35.[pdf]
2012
Hahn, U., Oaksford, M., & Harris, A. J. L. (2012). Testimony and argument: A Bayesian perspective. In F. Zenker (Ed.), Bayesian Argumentation (pp. 15-38). Dordrecht: Springer.
Harris, A. J. L., Hsu, A. S., & Madsen, J. K. (2012). Because Hitler did it! Quantitative tests of Bayesian argumentation using 'ad hominem'. Thinking and Reasoning, 18, 311-343 [pdf]
Harris, A. J. L., & Osman, M. (2012). The illusion of control: A Bayesian perspective. Synthese, 189 (1, Supplement 1), 29-38. [pdf]
2011
*Harris, A. J. L., & Corner, A. (2011). Communicating environmental risks: Clarifying the severity effect in interpretations of verbal probability expressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 1571-1578 [pdf]
[* This paper resulted in receipt of the Division of Experimental Psychology 2012 New Investigator Award in Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition.]
Harris, A. J. L., & Hahn, U. (2011). Unrealistic optimism about future life events: A cautionary note. Psychological Review, 118, 135-154. [pdf]
Harris, A. J. L., Rowley, M. G., Beck, S. R., Robinson, E. J., & McColgan, K. L. (2011). Agency affects adults', but not children's, guessing preferences in a game of chance. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 1772-1787. [pdf]
Navarro-Martinez, D., Salisbury, L. C., Lemon, K. N., Stewart, N., Matthews, W. J., & Harris, A. J. L. (2011). Minimum required payment and supplemental information disclosure effects on consumer debt repayment decisions. Journal of Marketing Research, 48, S60-S77.[pdf]
2010
Corner, A., Harris, A. J. L., & Hahn, U. (2010). Conservatism in belief revision and participant skepticism. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1625-1630). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
2009
Hahn, U., Harris, A. J. L., & Corner, A. (2009). Argument content and argument source: An exploration. Informal Logic, 29, 337-367. [pdf]
Harris, A. J. L., Corner, A., & Hahn, U. (2009). Estimating the probability of negative events. Cognition, 110, 51-64. [pdf]
Harris, A. J. L., & Hahn, U. (2009). Bayesian rationality in evaluating multiple testimonies: Incorporating the role of coherence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 1366-1372. [pdf]
Harris, A., Corner, A., & Hahn, U. (2009). "Damned by faint praise": A Bayesian account. In N. A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 292-297). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. [pdf]
2007
Harris, A., Corner, A., & Hahn, U. (2007). Estimating the probability of negative events. In S. Vosniadou, D. Kayser, & A. Protopapas (Eds.), Proceedings of EuroCogSci07: The European Cognitive Science Conference (pp. 353-358). Hove, UK: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. [doc]