Description:
Online public lecture by Professor Richard Tunney, Head of Psychology in the College of Health and Life Sciences at Aston University.
Lecture overview:
Many of the decisions that we make in everyday life are made for the benefit of other people. However, research suggests that people often make decisions on behalf of other people that differ from those they would make for themselves.
This can be the source of conflict when, for example, parents make decisions that they believe to be in their children's best interest and raises practical problems for next-of-kin regarding end-of-life decisions.
During this lecture, Professor Tunney will examine how closely surrogate decision-making matches the recipient's wishes or is a projection of the surrogate's own preferences.
He will propose a novel domain-general theory as a unifying explanatory model of the surrogate decision-making process. The common factor affecting surrogate decision making appears to be psychological distance, which can improve judgement in some instances but impair it in others.
Professor Tunney will also describe some of the recent research conducted at Aston that explores discrepancies in moral judgments that arise from the surrogate decision-making process.
Speaker Biography:
Richard is Head of Psychology in the College of Health and Life Sciences at Aston University. He is an experimental cognitive psychologist by background. Most of Richard's research is on judgment and decision-making. In recent years, he has focused on surrogate decision-making (DMfO), behavioural addiction and impulsivity. His other research interests include: implicit learning and categorization, episodic memory, second-language acquisition, and pro-social behaviour.
