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Professor Emmanuel Pothos

Professor of Psychology

School of Health & Medical Sciences Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

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About

Overview

Dr Emmanuel Pothos studied physics at Imperial College, during which time he obtained the Stanley Raimes Memorial Prize in mathematics, and continued with a doctorate in experimental psychology at the University of Oxford.

He has worked with a range of computational frameworks for cognitive modelling, including ones based on information theory, flexible representation spaces, Bayesian methods and, more recently, quantum theory.

He has authored approximately 60 journal articles on related topics (out of a total of about 120 journal articles), as well as on applications of cognitive methods to health and clinical psychology.

Research

Research interests

- Categorisation, similarity, representation
- Decision making and reasoning
- Learning processes
- Attentional biases in clinical and health psychology

Research funding

2022: E. M. Pothos, J. M. Yearsley, & J. R. Busemeyer: 36 month Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Material Command, USAF grant to study “Limitations in bounded rational agents.” Value: £163,895.
2018: E. M. Pothos, P. Blasiak, & B. W. Wojciechowski: 36 month Office of Naval Research Global (ONRG) grant to study “Anticipating decisions and Bell’s bound.” Value: £115,613.
2016: E. M. Pothos, J. R. Busemeyer, & R. M. Shiffrin: 24 month Leverhulme Trust grant to study “A quantum approach to decision making in Bernoulli’s St. Petersburg’s paradox.” Value: £111,895.
2016: I. Basieva & E. M. Pothos: 24 month Horizon 2020 Marie Curie Fellowship to study “Quantum decision making.” Value: £147,398.
2013: E. M. Pothos: 36 month Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Air Force Material Command, USAF grant to study “The constructive role of decisions: implications from a quantum approach.” Value: £144,023.
2013: E. M. Pothos, J. R. Busemeyer, J. Trueblood, & J. A. Hampton: 24 month Leverhulme Trust grant to study “Quantum similarity: harnessing the flexibility of human similarity judgment.” Value: £98,962.

Areas of PhD supervision

- Computational and mathematical modeling in cognition
- Human experimental work in categorisation, decision making, and learning
- Attentional biases in excessive alcohol consumption and eating behaviour

Publications

Featured publications

  1. Pothos, E.M., Lewandowsky, S., Basieva, I., Barque-Duran, A., Tapper, K. and Khrennikov, A. (2021). Information overload for (bounded) rational agents. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288(1944), pp. 20202957-20202957. doi:10.1098/rspb.2020.2957

    [publisher’s website]

Publications by category

Books (2)

  • de Barros, J.A., Pothos, E. and Coecke, B. (2017). Preface.
  • Atmanspacher, H., Filk, T. and Pothos, E. (2016). Preface.

Chapters (4)

  • Pothos, E.M. and Yearsley, J.M. (2023). Quantum Cognition: Quo Vadis? The Quantum-Like Revolution (pp. 281-297). Springer International Publishing. ISBN 9783031129858.
  • White, L.C., Pothos, E.M. and Busemeyer, J.R. (2017). A Quantum Probability Model for the Constructive Influence of Affective Evaluation. The Palgrave Handbook of Quantum Models in Social Science (pp. 267-291). Palgrave Macmillan UK. ISBN 9781137492753.
  • Trueblood, J.S., Mistry, P.K. and Pothos, E.M. (2016). A Quantum Bayes Net Approach to Causal Reasoning. Advanced Series on Mathematical Psychology (pp. 449-464). WORLD SCIENTIFIC.
  • Barque Duran, A., Pothos, E.M., Yearsley, J.M., Hampton, J.A., Busemeyer, J.R. and Trueblood, J.S. (2016). Similarity Judgments: From Classical to Complex Vector Psychological Spaces. Advanced Series on Mathematical Psychology (pp. 415-448). WORLD SCIENTIFIC.

Conference papers and proceedings (23)

  • Coecke, B., Kissinger, A., Gogioso, S., Dündar-Coecke, S., Puca, C., Yeh, L.... Khan, I. High schoolers excel at Oxford quantum course using pictorial mathematics. .doi:10.1088/1742-6596/3189/1/012008
  • Widdows, D. and Pothos, E.M. Low Liquidity Brings Volatility: Quantum Zeno Effect and Pricing. .doi:10.1007/978-3-031-83117-1_36
  • Pothos, E.M., Yearsley, J.M., Wang, Z., Kvam, P.D. and Busemeyer, J.R. Full Day Tutorial on Quantum Theory in Cognitive Modeling. .
  • Pothos, E.M., Busemeyer, J.R., Pleskac, T., Yearsley, J.M., Tenenbaum, J.B., Goodman, N.D.... Shiffrin, R.M. Extending Rationality. .
  • Barque-Duran, A. and Pothos, E.M. The Refugees' Dilemma: not all deontological moral choices are of the same kind. .
  • Barque-Duran, A., Pothos, E.M., Yearsley, J.M. and Hampton, J.A. The impact of the Digital Age in Moral Judgments. .
  • Yearsley, J.M., Pothos, E.M. and Barqué-Duran, A. Empirical constraints on computational level models of interference effects in human probabilistic judgements. .
  • Yearsley, J.M., Trueblood, J.S. and Pothos, E.M. When are representations of causal events quantum versus classical? .
  • Yearsley, J.M. and Pothos, E.M. Intermediate Judgments Inhibit Belief Updating: Zeno's Paradox in Decision Making. .
  • Atmanspacher, H., Filk, T. and Pothos, E. Quantum Interaction. .doi:10.1007/978-3-319-28675-4
  • Yearsley, J.M. and Pothos, E.M. Towards an Empirical test of Realism in Cognition. .
  • Barque-Duran, A., Pothos, E.M., Yearsley, J.M. and Hampton, J.A. Moral Dynamics In Everyday Life: How Does Morality Evolve In Time? .
  • Yearsley, J.M., Pothos, E.M., Duran, A.B. and Hampton, J.A. Diagnosticity: Some theoretical and empirical progress. .
  • Mistry, P.K., Trueblood, J.S., Vandekerckhove, J. and Pothos, E.M. A latent-mixture quantum probability model of causal reasoning within a Bayesian inference framework. .
  • Yearsley, J.M., Pothos, E.M., Hampton, J.A. and Barque Duran, A. Towards a Quantum Probability Theory of Similarity Judgments. .doi:10.1007/978-3-319-15931-7_11
  • Trueblood, J.S. and Pothos, E.M. A Quantum Probability Approach to Human Causal Reasoning. .
  • Proust, J., Pothos, E.M., Busemeyer, J.R., Miller, R., Cushman, F., Quintelier, K.J.P.... Kreitler, S. Thinking about norms: Epistemic, rational, and moral norms in human thinking. .
  • Reppa, I. and Pothos, E. Predicting similarity change as a result of categorization. .
  • Pothos, E.M., Wang, Z. and Busemeyer, J.R. Half Day Tutorial on Using Quantum Probability Theory to Model Cognition. .
  • White, L.C., Pothos, E.M. and Busemeyer, J.R. A quantum probability perspective on the nature of psychological uncertainty. .
  • Pothos, E.M., Busemeyer, J.R., Shiffrin, R.M., Trueblood, J.S., Wang, Z., Blutner, R.K.... Atmanspacher, H. The Potential of Quantum Probability for Modeling Cognitive Processes. .
  • Pothos, E.M. and Busemeyer, J.R. A Quantum Probability Explanation for Violations of Symmetry in Similarity Judgments. .
  • Brunstrom, J., Rogers, P., Pothos, E., Tapper, K. and Caltri, R. Estimating Everyday Portion Size Using a 'Method of Constant Stimuli'. .

Journal articles (144)