Research Interests

My research is concerned with how people interpret conditionals of the form if p then q . Conditional thinking is a fundamental cognitive ability which allows us to hypothetically consider possible future events and their consequences (e.g., If people become more energy efficient, then their utility bills will fall) or equally to consider what could have been if things had been different (e.g., If the manager had picked a different striker, then we would have won). Conditionals of this type help us to deal with an uncertain world, but are themselves uncertain (Evans & Over, 2004). In interpreting the first example a reader may have differing degrees of certainty about the probability of p (i.e., the probability of people becoming more energy efficient), the probability of q (i.e., the probability of utility bills falling) and the probability of q given p (i.e., the probability of utility bills falling given that people become more energy efficient). Each of these judgements either alone or in combination are likely to influence both the incremental and ultimate interpretation of this statement. By examining how these subjective probability judgements influence the moment-by-moment interpretation of conditional information I hope to develop current theories of conditional reasoning which have traditionally been restricted to offline studies about abstract material. See Publications for my latest work.