Tamara Shengelia

How do ordinary people and judges, jurors, lawyers, investigators and others involved in legal decision making, interpret and integrate evidence? How do people update beliefs in light of new evidence? Are people Bayesian thinkers and decision makers?

These are some of the questions examined in my PhD.  My research interests are based in the area of judgment and decision making. The focus of my PhD is understanding and modelling interpretation and integration of evidence in legal contexts. The PhD research aims to build Bayesian models of legal decision making and identify psychological inference mechanisms related to evidence accumulation and integration as well as processes underlying the evaluation of evidence.

This work has both theoretical and practical implications. On a theoretical level, the PhD seeks to develop normative, descriptive and prescriptive accounts of legal reasoning. On a practical level, insights from the study of how people integrate and evaluate evidence can be applied to real life scenarios, e.g. using knowledge about how people interpret complex evidence to improve inferences in legal contexts and ensure the fairness of legal decision making in real life.

My background is in cognitive psychology and public understanding of science.