Dr Francesco Rigoli
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About
Overview
Francesco Rigoli is a social scientist based at City St Georges, University of London. His research focuses on the psychological and cultural foundations of ideology and public opinion, exploring how cognitive and emotional processes shape political attitudes, belief systems, and societal trends. He has published widely on topics such as extremism, polarization, religion, and decision-making, combining insights from psychology, neuroscience, and political science.
Qualifications
- PhD, University of Siena, Italy, 2009 - 2012
- MSc, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, 2005 - 2007
- BSc, University of Florence, Florence, Italy, 2002 - 2005
Employment
- Research Associate, University College London, United Kingdom, 2012 - 2016
Publications
Publications by category
Journal articles (73)
- Rigoli, F. (2026). Neuroticism Is Linked With Liberal Ideology in Young, but not Old, People in the United States. International Social Science Journal, 76(260), pp. 455-465. doi:10.1111/issj.70025
- Rigoli, F. (2026). A Causal Map Framework to Explain Support for Strong Leaders in Politics. International Social Science Journal. doi:10.1111/issj.70051
- Zavlis, O., Bentall, R.P., Fonagy, P. and Rigoli, F. (2026). A Formal Theory of Mood Instability. Clinical Psychological Science, 14(3), pp. 243-269. doi:10.1177/21677026251363862
- Pezzulo, G., Nuzzi, D. and Rigoli, F. (2026). Why we value things more as we are about to lose them: A reference-based theory. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 184, pp. 106613-106613. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2026.106613
- Rigoli, F. (2026). Bayes or Pascal? The computations underlying motivated reasoning. Philosophical Psychology pp. 1-36. doi:10.1080/09515089.2026.2615690
- Rigoli, F. (2026). On the origin of the reward function: Exploring the role of conditioned reinforcement and social learning. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 33(1). doi:10.3758/s13423-025-02813-3
- Rigoli, F. (2025). Modernization and Ideological Polarization on a Global Scale. Cross-Cultural Research, 59(4), pp. 411-454. doi:10.1177/10693971251327738
- Hanson, K., Vandrevala, T., Martinelli, C. and Rigoli, F. (2025). Ingroup conspiratorial beliefs: Re-thinking racial/ethnic minority group conspiracy in the UK and US. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 13(2), pp. 223-238. doi:10.5964/jspp.16835
- Rigoli, F. and Lennon, J. (2025). Cultural Incentive Learning: How Culture Shapes Acquisition of Values. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 34(3). doi:10.1002/evan.70005
- Rigoli, F. and Lennon, J. (2025). The Gods as Latent Causes: A Statistical Inference Theory of Religion. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 35(3), pp. 87-112. doi:10.1080/10508619.2024.2422173
- Rigoli, F. and Lennon, J. (2025). Discussing the Gods as Latent Causes: Challenges, Clarifications, and Integrations. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 35(3), pp. 150-158. doi:10.1080/10508619.2025.2553409
- Rigoli, F. (2025). Ideology shapes evaluation of history within the general population. Political Psychology, 46(1), pp. 25-47. doi:10.1111/pops.12971
- Rigoli, F. (2025). The value of social position. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 37(2), pp. 170-181. doi:10.1080/20445911.2024.2438276
- Rigoli, F. and Mirolli, M. (2024). The Status Importance Scale: Development and validation of a self‐report questionnaire for measuring how much people care about status. British Journal of Psychology, 115(4), pp. 683-705. doi:10.1111/bjop.12716
- Rigoli, F. (2024). Deconstructing the Conspiratorial Mind: the Computational Logic Behind Conspiracy Theories. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 15(2), pp. 567-584. doi:10.1007/s13164-022-00657-7
- Rigoli, F. (2024). Attitudes Towards Economic Inequality in a Global Perspective: Evidence from the World Value Survey. Journal of Global Awareness, 5(1), pp. 1-10. doi:10.24073/jga/5/01/04
- Rigoli, F. (2024). Opinions about immigration, patriotism, and welfare policies during the coronavirus emergency: The role of political orientation and anxiety. The Social Science Journal, 61(2), pp. 311-320. doi:10.1080/03623319.2020.1806583
- Rigoli, F. (2023). Intervention Bias: People Overpredict Social Problems in Which They Believe Society Can Intervene. The American Journal of Psychology, 136(4), pp. 415-428. doi:10.5406/19398298.136.4.07
- Rigoli, F. (2023). Testing thrasymachus’ hypothesis: the psychological processes behind power justification. Philosophical Psychology. doi:10.1080/09515089.2023.2290166
- Rigoli, F. (2023). Perception of political influence within the general population of the United Kingdom. International Social Science Journal, 73(249), pp. 771-787. doi:10.1111/issj.12404
- Rigoli, F. and Pezzulo, G. (2023). The traps of adaptation: Addiction as maladaptive referent-dependent evaluation. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 23(4), pp. 973-985. doi:10.3758/s13415-023-01086-4
- Rigoli, F. (2023). Secularization and Religiosity: A Computational Psychological Perspective. pp. 3-20. doi:10.1163/9789004544574_002
- Rigoli, F. (2023). Guess who? Identity attribution as Bayesian inference. Philosophical Psychology. doi:10.1080/09515089.2023.2224379
- Rigoli, F. (2023). Political Extremism in a Global Perspective. Journal of Global Awareness, 4(1)
- Rigoli, F. (2023). The Computations Underlying Religious Conversion: A Bayesian Decision Model. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 23(1-2), pp. 241-257. doi:10.1163/15685373-12340161
- Rigoli, F. (2023). Political Extremism and a Generalized Propensity to Discriminate Among Values. Political Psychology, 44(2), pp. 301-318. doi:10.1111/pops.12839
- Rigoli, F. (2022). Belief Formation in the Social Context: A Bayesian Decision Account. Changing Societies & Personalities, 6(4), pp. 750-763. doi:10.15826/csp.2022.6.4.201
- Rigoli, F. and Pezzulo, G. (2022). A reference-based theory of motivation and effort allocation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 29(6), pp. 2070-2082. doi:10.3758/s13423-022-02135-8
- Rigoli, F. (2022). Prisoner of the present: Borderline personality and a tendency to overweight cues during Bayesian inference. Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment, 13(6), pp. 609-618. doi:10.1037/per0000549
- Rigoli, F. and Martinelli, C. (2022). A computational theory of evaluation processes in apathy. Current Psychology. doi:10.1007/s12144-022-03643-5
- Rigoli, F. (2022). When all glasses look half empty: a computational model of reference dependent evaluation to explain depression. Journal of Cognitive Psychology. doi:10.1080/20445911.2022.2107650
- Rigoli, F. (2021). A General Attitude towards Shopping and Its Link with Basic Human Values in the UK. Changing Societies & Personalities, 5(4), pp. 618-635. doi:10.15826/csp.2021.5.4.153
- Rigoli, F., Martinelli, C. and Pezzulo, G. (2021). I want to believe: delusion, motivated reasoning, and Bayesian decision theory. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 26(6), pp. 408-420. doi:10.1080/13546805.2021.1982686
- Rigoli, F., Martinelli, C. and Pezzulo, G. (2021). The Half-Empty/Full Glass in Mental Health: A Reference-Dependent Computational Model of Evaluation in Psychopathology. Clinical Psychological Science, 9(6), pp. 1021-1034. doi:10.1177/2167702621998344
- Rigoli, F. (2021). The Computations of a Traumatized Mind. Harvard Review of Psychiatry. doi:10.1097/hrp.0000000000000327
- Rigoli, F. (2021). The Link Between COVID-19, Anxiety, and Religious Beliefs in the United States and the United Kingdom. Journal of Religion and Health, 60(4), pp. 2196-2208. doi:10.1007/s10943-021-01296-5
- Rigoli, F. (2021). The psychology of ultimate values: A computational perspective. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. doi:10.1111/jtsb.12311
- Moutoussis, M., Garzón, B., Neufeld, S., Bach, D.R., Rigoli, F., Goodyer, I.... Kievit, R. (2021). Decision-making ability, psychopathology, and brain connectivity. Neuron, 109(12), pp. 2025-2040. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2021.04.019
- Rigoli, F. (2021). A computational perspective on faith: religious reasoning and Bayesian decision. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 11(2), pp. 147-164. doi:10.1080/2153599x.2020.1812704
- Rigoli, F. and Martinelli, C. (2021). A Reference-Dependent Computational Model of Anorexia Nervosa. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 21(2), pp. 269-277. doi:10.3758/s13415-021-00886-w
- Rigoli, F. (2021). Masters of suspicion: A Bayesian decision model of motivated political reasoning. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. doi:10.1111/jtsb.12274
- Rigoli, F. (2021). Political motivation: A referent evaluation mathematical model. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 9(1), pp. 8-23. doi:10.5964/jspp.5539
- Michely, J., Rigoli, F., Rutledge, R.B., Hauser, T.U. and Dolan, R.J. (2020). Distinct Processing of Aversive Experience in Amygdala Subregions. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 5(3), pp. 291-300. doi:10.1016/j.bpsc.2019.07.008
- Rigoli, F. (2019). Reference effects on decision-making elicited by previous rewards. Cognition, 192, pp. 104034-104034. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2019.104034
- Rigoli, F., Martinelli, C. and Shergill, S.S. (2019). The role of expecting feedback during decision-making under risk. NeuroImage, 202, pp. 116079-116079. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116079
- Rigoli, F., Michely, J., Friston, K.J. and Dolan, R.J. (2019). The role of the hippocampus in weighting expectations during inference under uncertainty. Cortex, 115, pp. 1-14. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2019.01.005
- Rigoli, F. and Dolan, R. (2018). Better than expected: the influence of option expectations during decision-making. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 285(1893), pp. 20182472-20182472. doi:10.1098/rspb.2018.2472
- Fiore, V.G., Nolte, T., Rigoli, F., Smittenaar, P., Gu, X. and Dolan, R.J. (2018). Value encoding in the globus pallidus: fMRI reveals an interaction effect between reward and dopamine drive. NeuroImage, 173, pp. 249-257. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.02.048
- Pezzulo, G., Rigoli, F. and Friston, K.J. (2018). Hierarchical Active Inference: A Theory of Motivated Control. TRENDS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCES, 22(4), pp. 294-306. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.009
- Rigoli, F., Preller, K.H. and Dolan, R.J. (2018). Risk preference and choice stochasticity during decisions for other people. COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE & BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE, 18(2), pp. 331-341. doi:10.3758/s13415-018-0572-x
- Martinelli, C., Rigoli, F., Averbeck, B. and Shergill, S.S. (2018). The value of novelty in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Research, 192, pp. 287-293. doi:10.1016/j.schres.2017.05.007
- Rigoli, F., Chew, B., Dayan, P. and Dolan, R.J. (2018). Learning Contextual Reward Expectations for Value Adaptation. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 30(1), pp. 50-69. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01191
- Martinelli, C., Rigoli, F., Dolan, R.J. and Shergill, S.S. (2018). Decreased value-sensitivity in schizophrenia. Psychiatry Research, 259, pp. 295-301. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2017.10.031
- Rigoli, F., Mathys, C., Friston, K.J. and Dolan, R.J. (2017). A unifying Bayesian account of contextual effects in value-based choice. PLoS Computational Biology, 13(10), pp. 1-1. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005769
- Rigoli, F., Pezzulo, G., Dolan, R. and Friston, K. (2017). A Goal-Directed Bayesian Framework for Categorization. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00408
- Friston, K., FitzGerald, T., Rigoli, F., Schwartenbeck, P. and Pezzulo, G. (2017). Active Inference: A Process Theory. Neural Computation, 29(1), pp. 1-49. doi:10.1162/neco_a_00912
- Rigoli, F., Rutledge, R.B., Chew, B., Ousdal, O.T., Dayan, P. and Dolan, R.J. (2016). Dopamine Increases a Value-Independent Gambling Propensity. Neuropsychopharmacology, 41(11), pp. 2658-2667. doi:10.1038/npp.2016.68
- Rigoli, F., Chew, B., Dayan, P. and Dolan, R.J. (2016). The Dopaminergic Midbrain Mediates an Effect of Average Reward on Pavlovian Vigor. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 28(9), pp. 1303-1317. doi:10.1162/jocn_a_00972
- Friston, K., FitzGerald, T., Rigoli, F., Schwartenbeck, P., O⿿Doherty, J. and Pezzulo, G. (2016). Active inference and learning. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 68, pp. 862-879. doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.06.022
- Rigoli, F., Friston, K.J. and Dolan, R.J. (2016). Neural processes mediating contextual influences on human choice behaviour. Nature Communications, 7(1). doi:10.1038/ncomms12416
- Martinelli, C., Rigoli, F. and Shergill, S.S. (2016). Aberrant Force Processing in Schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin pp. sbw092-sbw092. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbw092
- Pezzulo, G., Cartoni, E., Rigoli, F., Pio-Lopez, L. and Friston, K. (2016). Active Inference, epistemic value, and vicarious trial and error. Learning & Memory, 23(7), pp. 322-338. doi:10.1101/lm.041780.116
- Rigoli, F., Chew, B., Dayan, P. and Dolan, R.J. (2016). Multiple value signals in dopaminergic midbrain and their role in avoidance contexts. NeuroImage, 135, pp. 197-203. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2016.04.062
- Rigoli, F., Friston, K.J., Martinelli, C., Selaković, M., Shergill, S.S. and Dolan, R.J. (2016). A Bayesian model of context-sensitive value attribution. eLife, 5. doi:10.7554/elife.16127
- Fiore, V.G., Rigoli, F., Stenner, M.-.P., Zaehle, T., Hirth, F., Heinze, H.-.J.... Dolan, R.J. (2016). Changing pattern in the basal ganglia: motor switching under reduced dopaminergic drive. Scientific Reports, 6(1). doi:10.1038/srep23327
- Rigoli, F., Rutledge, R.B., Dayan, P. and Dolan, R.J. (2016). The influence of contextual reward statistics on risk preference. NeuroImage, 128, pp. 74-84. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2015.12.016
- Rigoli, F., Ewbank, M., Dalgleish, T. and Calder, A. (2016). Threat visibility modulates the defensive brain circuit underlying fear and anxiety. Neuroscience Letters, 612, pp. 7-13. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2015.11.026
- Rigoli, F., Pezzulo, G. and Dolan, R.J. (2016). Prospective and Pavlovian mechanisms in aversive behaviour. Cognition, 146, pp. 415-425. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2015.10.017
- Pezzulo, G., Rigoli, F. and Friston, K. (2015). Active Inference, homeostatic regulation and adaptive behavioural control. Progress in Neurobiology, 134, pp. 17-35. doi:10.1016/j.pneurobio.2015.09.001
- Friston, K., Rigoli, F., Ognibene, D., Mathys, C., Fitzgerald, T. and Pezzulo, G. (2015). Active inference and epistemic value. Cognitive Neuroscience, 6(4), pp. 187-214. doi:10.1080/17588928.2015.1020053
- Pezzulo, G., Rigoli, F. and Chersi, F. (2013). The Mixed Instrumental Controller: Using Value of Information to Combine Habitual Choice and Mental Simulation. Frontiers in Psychology, 4. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00092
- Rigoli, F., Pavone, E.F. and Pezzulo, G. (2012). Aversive Pavlovian Responses Affect Human Instrumental Motor Performance. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 6. doi:10.3389/fnins.2012.00134
- Pezzulo, G. and Rigoli, F. (2011). The Value of Foresight: How Prospection Affects Decision-Making. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 5. doi:10.3389/fnins.2011.00079