Paul Slovic

Paul Slovic is an American psychologist, born in 1938, who is emeritus professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and president of Decision Research, an organization of scientists who study judgment and decision making when risk is involved. He earned his undergraduate degree at Stanford University in 1959 and his doctorate in psychology at the University of Michigan in 1964. His research centers on how people judge, choose and perceive risk. With Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein he is counted among the leading theorists of risk perception, and he is associated with the psychometric paradigm, the affect heuristic and the idea of risk as feeling. His later work examines psychic numbing, the failure of people to respond emotionally to mass human tragedies such as genocide. Honors include the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association in 1993 and election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016.