Research

Recent Publications

Malthouse, E., Pilgrim, C., Sgroi, D., & Hills, T. T. (2023). When fairness is not enough: The disproportionate contributions of the poor in a collective action problem. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.

Malthouse, E. (2023). Confirmation bias and vaccine-related beliefs in the time of COVID-19. Journal of Public Health, 45(2), 523-528.

Pilgrim, C., Sanborn, A., Malthouse, E., & Hills, T. T. (2024). Confirmation bias emerges from an approximation to Bayesian reasoning. Cognition, 245, 105693.

Malthouse, E., Liang, Y., Russell, S., & Hills, T. (2022). The influence of exposure to randomness on lateral thinking in divergent, convergent, and creative search. Cognition, 218, 104937. 

Current Projects

Luck framing supports the avoidance of collective disaster when inequalities in vulnerability exist. Joint with Charlie Pilgrim, Daniel Sgroi, and Thomas Hills (under review).

The private solution problem: a 37-nation study. Joint with the Collective Decision-Making and Culture Lab.

The emergence of stable cooperative and competitive communities in the optional prisoner's dilemma. Joint with Charlie Pilgrim, Thomas Hills, Nobuyuki Hanaki, Paolo Turrini, Apurva Shah, and Chin Wing Leung.

Nudging charitable donors by highlighting the positive effects of giving. Joint with Tom Lane. 

Encouraging people to set lower personal carbon budgets: anchoring is more effective than social reference groups. Joint with Sarah Lynn Flecke and Erika Aparicio.

Conditional cooperation and asymmetric reciprocity across cultures. Joint with Fei Song and the Collective Decision-Making and Culture Lab.

Listed buildings improve the scenicness of urban landscapes. Joint with Sidney Sherborne.

Blogs

As part of my role at CogCo I curate the company blog. Below are some of the articles I've either written or co-written in recent years:

• New Year, Same Old Predictions (Jan 2024)

• What Could Your Partner Do To Improve Your Relationship? (Sept 2023)

• How Might We Motivate Employees? Answers from Economics and Psychology (Jul 2023)

• What Does the TV Show Golden Balls Tell Us About Human Cooperation? (Jun 2023)

• Goldilocks and The Three Lemonades (Mar 2023)

• Setting Carbon Budgets: The Effect of Defaults and Social Reference Groups (Mar 2023)

• What Do People Think is a Fair Salary Increase in a Time of High Inflation? (Jan 2023)

• Will England Get Knocked Out Of The World Cup On Penalties? (Nov 2022)

• What Really Makes People Happier Within Countries Over Time? (Nov 2022)

• How Might Online Platforms Influence What We Think Is Important? (Oct 2022)

• Can Your Online Banking App Improve Your Carbon Literacy? (Aug 2022)

• What Do 19th Century Farmers Tell Us About Smartphone Notifications? (Jul 2022)

• What Does the Virtual Property Market Tell us About the Psychology of Ownership? (Mar 2022)

• Great Expectations: Comets, Cures, and Culture (Feb 2022)

• Why Don’t We Give Cash at Christmas? (Dec 2021)

• Why We Sometimes Do the Opposite of What We Are Told: Romeo, Juliet, and Reactance (Nov 2021)

• When is a Longer Wait Better than a Shorter Wait? (Sept 2021)

• False Positives and False Certainties of Covid-19 Test Results (Apr 2021)

• Understanding the Lockdown Time Warp (Mar 2021)

• Do We Need Cities in a Country of Remote Workers? (Jan 2021)

• The Ham Sandwich Fallacy and How to Avoid it (Dec 2020)

• Three Principles for Boosting Vaccine Uptake (Nov 2020)

• The Illusion of Covid Control (Oct 2020)

• Three Rules of Thumb for Motivating Work Meetings (Sept 2020)

• Zoom Fatigue and What to Do About It (Aug 2020)

Other Articles

I have also co-authored a few longer articles in recent years:

• Risk Communications (Mar 2021)

• Is Money all that Matters? The three lenses of value to drive a workforce transformation (Jan 2021)

• Shaping the New Normal: Changing working practices for good (Jul 2020)