Paul Slovic

Paul Slovic
NationalityAmerican
Alma materStanford University
University of Michigan
Known forRisk perception
Behavioural sciences
Risk analysis
Communication sciences
AwardsBower Award (2022)
Scientific career
FieldsDecision Sciences, Risk
InstitutionsUniversity of Oregon
University of Padova
Hebrew University
American Academy of Arts and Sciences

Paul Slovic (born 1938 in Chicago) is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and the president of Decision Research. Decision Research is a collection of scientists from all over the nation and in other countries that study decision-making in times when risks are involved. He was also the president for the Society of Risk Analysis until 1984. He earned his undergraduate degree at Stanford University in 1959 and his PhD in psychology at the University of Michigan in 1964 and has received honorary doctorates from the Stockholm School of Economics and the University of East Anglia.[1] He is past president of the Society for Risk Analysis and in 1991 received its Distinguished Contribution Award. In 1993, he received the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, and in 1995 he received the Outstanding Contribution to Science Award from the Oregon Academy of Science. In 2016 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.[2]

Slovic studies human judgment, decision making, and risk perception, and has published extensively on these topics. He is considered, with Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein, a leading theorist and researcher in the risk perception field (the psychometric paradigm,[3] the affect heuristic, and "risk as feeling"[4]).

His most recent work examines “psychic numbing”[5] and the failure to respond to mass human tragedies.[6]

  1. ^ "University of East Anglia Honorary Doctorate Award Ceremony". Archived from the original on July 22, 2012. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  2. ^ National Academy of Sciences Members and Foreign Associates Elected, News from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, May 3, 2016, retrieved May 14, 2016.
  3. ^ Abstract Plus
  4. ^ Slovic, Paul; Finucane, Melissa L.; Peters, Ellen; MacGregor, Donald G. (2004). "Risk as Analysis and Risk as Feelings: Some Thoughts about Affect, Reason, Risk, and Rationality". Risk Analysis. 24 (2): 311–322. Bibcode:2004RiskA..24..311S. doi:10.1111/j.0272-4332.2004.00433.x. PMID 15078302.
  5. ^ Slovik, Paul (April 2007). ""If I look at the mass I will never act": Psychic numbing and genocide" (PDF). Judgment and Decision Making. 2 (2). Society for Judgment and Decision Making: 79–95. doi:10.1017/S1930297500000061.
  6. ^ "Psychic Numbing and Mass Atrocity". SSRN 1809951.