Dr. Fergus Bolger

Education:

Ph.D. Cognitive Psychology, University of London, 1988

Harvey, N. and Bolger, F. (2001). Collecting information: Optimizing outcomes, screening options, or facilitating discrimination? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54A, 269-301. (2006 impact: 2.154)

Wright. G. and Bolger, F. and Rowe, G. (2002). An empirical test of the relative validity of expert and lay judgments of risk. Risk Analysis, 22, 1107-1122. (1.938). Link to paper

Bolger, F. and Önkal-Atay, D. (2004). The effects of feedback on judgmental interval predictions. International Journal of Forecasting, 20, 29-39. (1.429)

Önkal, D. and Bolger, F. Provider-user differences in perceived usefulness of forecasting formats. (2004). Omega: International Journal of Management Science, 32, 31-39. (0.663). Link to paper

Colman, A.M., Pulford, B. D. and Bolger, F. (2007). Asymmetric dominance effects in games with and without dominant strategies.Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104, 193-206. (1.514). Link to paper

Bolger, F., Pulford, B.D., and Colman, A.M. (2008). Market Entry Decisions: Effects of Absolute and Relative Confidence. Experimental Psychology, 55 (2), 113-120. (2.406). Link to paper

Bolger, F., Önkal, D., and Gönül, M.S. (2008). Saglik hizmetlerinin saglanmasinda tahmin üretim ve kullanimi (Forecasting in health-service provision). Iktisat, Isletme ve Finans (Economics, Business and Finance), 23, 5-16.

Other recent work:

Book Chapter:

Antonides, G., Bolger, F and Trip, G. (2006). Classroom experiments in behavioral economics. In M. Altman (Ed.). Handbook of Contemporary Behavioral Economics. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.

Technical Report:

Bolger, F. and Antonides, G. (2001). Dual processes in consumer choice. RIBES report No. 2001-01. (ISBN 90-5086-384-1).

"Confidence in interactive decisions". Colman, A. M., Pulford, B. D., & Bolger, F. (2003-5). £121,563 awarded by the ESRC. http://www.le.ac.uk/psychology/amc/cid.html

“News, mood and consumer confidence”. Bolger, F., Gillet, R., and Antonides, G. (2004-6). £47,125 awarded by the ESRC. news events, mood and consumer confidence

Research Interests

Judgment and decision making; consumer behaviour and economic psychology; subjective probability and risk; judgmental forecasting and expectation formation; cognitive expertise; decision-aiding; cognitive development and psycholinguistics; effects of mood and emotion on cognition; causes and consequences of overconfidence; quantitative and qualitative research methods.

Research Objectives

My current research interests are focused on investigating judgment and decision making in complex, ‘ecologically valid’ tasks such as consumer choice and precaution adoption behaviour. My aim is to build computational models of the cognitive processes by which risky decisions are made. I received an ESRC grant of over £80k to study this topic for two years. The project was entitled "A cognitive theory of risk-taking behaviour". I continued to pursue this program of research in another project entitled "Cognitive route modelling of perception of food risk". During this second project I became interested in so-called ‘dual-process theories’ as an explanatory framework, and this framework underpins much of my current work. During my year (1998-99) at the Rotterdam Institute of Business Economic Studies (RIBES) I developed new contacts and ideas which have resulted in further ongoing collaborative empirical research and theoretical work in this area.

I'm also interested in accounting for the pervasive finding of overconfidence in probability judgments with the view to uncovering the cognitive processes by which such judgments are made (with particular reference to the expression of the likelihood of future events: both with regard to informal expectation formation and judgmental probability forecasting). I intend to continue this line of research in collaboration with colleagues at UCL, the University of Arizona, and Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. In addition, I am also involved with the 2 ESRC projects mentioned above. One project -- for which I was a co-applicant on the  proposal -- began in September 2003 and  investigates the role of confidence in interactive decisions. The other project -- for which I was the principle applicant on the proposal -- begins in July 2004 and looks at the relationship between news events, mood and consumer confidence.

A third research strand is information collection  and utilization for multiattribute choice. I have set up a couple of collaborative projects with colleagues formerly at Bilkent to investigate information collection in expert financial forecasting and portfolio construction, and methods of assisting the evaluation of alternatives in multiattribute choice.

It may be noted that the three research streams are closely related, as information collection, expectation formation and probability assessment are integral to complex decision making under risk and uncertainty.

Links

Full Curriculum Vitae

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