Paul Slovic

Paul Slovic is a professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and the president of Decision Research. He earned his undergraduate degree at Stanford University in 1959 and his Ph.D. 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. 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.

Dr. Slovic studies human judgment, decision making, and risk perception, and has published extensively on these topics. He is considered, with Baruch Fischhoff, a leading theorist and researcher in the risk perception field (the psychometric paradigm, the affect heuristic, and "risk as feeling"). His most recent work examines “psychic numbing” and the failure to respond to mass human tragedies.

Photo credit: Paul Slovic