I'm a Research Fellow at the Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics (CeDEx) at the University of Nottingham. I'm currently working with Professor Simon Gächter on his European Research Council project called PRINCIPLES, which aims to develop our understanding of human cooperation.
I mainly study the effects of nestedness – feeling part of a greater whole beyond ourselves – on prosocial behaviour, pro-environmental behaviour, and wellbeing throughout our lives. Right now, I'm particularly focused on our experience of the evolved nest in childhood and what it means for who we become in adulthood.
In 2022 I founded the Collective Decision-Making and Culture Lab (CDMCL) – an interdisciplinary group of 72 researchers based in 38 countries – which aims to bring global perspectives to the study of global collective action problems (situations in which in which the efforts of multiple individuals are required to achieve joint outcomes, such as global warming).
Lastly, I co-founded Bristol Talks – a platform that highlights inspiring conversations happening in Bristol. And I am a Research Fellow at CogCo, where I help companies to apply insights from behavioural science to improve lives at scale.
Research
Recent Publications
Malthouse, E., Pilgrim, C., Sgroi, D., & Hills, T. T. (2025). Luck framing supports the avoidance of collective disaster when inequalities in vulnerability exist. Journal of Environmental Psychology.
Pilgrim, C., Sanborn, A., Malthouse, E., & Hills, T. T. (2024). Confirmation bias emerges from an approximation to Bayesian reasoning. Cognition.
Malthouse, E. (2023). Confirmation bias and vaccine-related beliefs in the time of COVID-19. Journal of Public Health.
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., Liang, Y., Russell, S., & Hills, T. (2022). The influence of exposure to randomness on lateral thinking in divergent, convergent, and creative search. Cognition.
Current Projects
To what extent can early life experience of the evolved nest explain prosocial and pro-environmental behaviour? Joint with Simon Gächter and Sidney Sherborne.
Breaking the cycle: a longitudinal study of nested care and wellbeing across generations. Joint with Darcia Narvaez and Mary Tarsha.
How does early life experience of the evolved nest shape social capital? Joint with Gordon D. A. Brown and Nobuyuki Hanaki.
Assessing private solutions to collective action problems in a 34-nation study. Joint with the Collective Decision-Making and Culture Lab (under review). Preprint link
Listed buildings improve the scenicness of English urban landscapes. Joint with Sidney Sherborne (under review).
The emergence of stable cooperative and competitive communities in the optional prisoner's dilemma. Joint with Charlie Pilgrim, Thomas Hills, Nobuyuki Hanaki.
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:
Coffee Colaboration (Jan 2025)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Other Articles
I have also co-authored a few longer articles in recent years: