Professor Peter Ayton

Professor Peter Ayton

Associate Dean for Research

Department of Psychology

Overview

Professor Ayton studies behavioural decision theory. Specifically, his research investigates how people make judgments and decisions under conditions of risk, uncertainty and ambiguity. He uses a variety of empirical methods including laboratory experiments, surveys and field studies.

He is a member of the European Association for Decision Making and the Society for Judgment & Decision Making and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making; Current Psychology Letters: Behaviour, Brain & Cognition and Theory and Psychology.

Professor Ayton joined the Psychology Department at City in 1992 following research and lecturing posts at the City of London Polytechnic and a post at the BBC as manager of special projects in their Broadcasting Research Department.

He has been a visiting scholar at Princeton University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of California Los Angeles, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin, the University of Mannheim, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Bilkent University, and INSEAD in both Fontainebleau and Singapore. 

Education: 
PhD Psychology, 1988, University College London; 
BSc Psychology, 1977, North East London Polytechnic.

Teaching

Research interests

Selected publications

Papers

Broomhead, R., Marks, R. and Ayton, P. (2010). Confirmation of the ability to ventilate by facemask prior to administration of neuromuscular blocker: a non-instrumental piece of information? British Journal of Anaesthesia, 14, 313-317.

Walsh, E. and Ayton, P. (2009). What Would it be Like for Me and for You? Judged Impact of Chronic Health Conditions on Happiness. Medical Decision Making, 29, 15-22.

Kusev, P., van Schaik, P., Ayton, P., Dent, J. & Chater, N. (2009). Exaggerated Risk: Prospect Theory And Probability Weighting In Risky Choice. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 1487-1505 .

Walsh, E. and Ayton, P. (2009). My Imagination Versus Your Feelings: Can Personal Affective Forecasts Be Improved by Knowing Other Peoples' Emotions? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15, 351-360.

Falk, R., Falk, R. and Ayton, P. (2009). Subjective Patterns of Randomness and Choice: Some Consequences of Collective Responses. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35, 203-224.

Alberdi, E., Povyakalo, A.A., Strigini, L., Ayton, P. and Given-Wilson, R. (2008). CAD in mammography: lesion-level vs. case-level analysis of the effects of prompts on human decisions. International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery, 3, 115-122.

Ayton, P., Pott, A. and Elwakili, N. (2007). Affective Forecasting: Why can't people predict their emotions? Thinking and Reasoning, 13, 62 - 80.

Dhami, M.K., Ayton, P. and Loewenstein, G.  (2007). Adaptation to Imprisonment: Indigenous or Imported? Criminal Justice & Behavior, 34, 1085-1100.

Wright, C. and Ayton, P. (2005) Focusing on what might happen and how it could feel: Can the anticipation of regret change students' computing-related choices? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 62, 759-783

Dhami, M. K., Mandel, D. R., Loewenstein, G., & Ayton, P. (2006). Prisoners' positive illusions of their post-release success. Law and Human Behavior, 30, 631-647.

Alberdi, E., Povyakalo, A.A., Strigini, L., Ayton, P., Hartswood, M., Procter, R. and Slack, R.  (2005).The use of Computer Aided Detection tools in screening mammography: A multidisciplinary investigation. British Journal of Radiology, 78, S31-S40.

Book chapters

Alberdi, E., Povyakalo, A.A., Strigini, L. and Ayton, P. (2010). Automation Biases in CAD-assisted Decision Making. pp320-322.  In Samei, E. & Krupinski, E. (Eds) Handbook of Medical Image Perception and Techniques. Cambridge University Press.

Ayton, P and Braennberg, A. (2008) Fallacies in Footballers. In Andersson, P., Ayton, P. and Schmidt, C. (Eds) Myths and facts about football: The economics and psychology of the world's greatest sport. Cambridge Scholars press.

Andersson, P., Ayton, P. and Schmidt, C. (Eds) 2008). "Myths and facts about football: The economics and psychology of the world's greatest sport". Cambridge Scholars press. (See related article in The Independent.)

Harries, C. and Ayton, P.  (2007) Medical Decision Making. In S. Ayers, A. Baum, C. McManus, S. Newman, K. Wallston, J. Weinman & R. West (Eds) Cambridge Handbook of Psychology, Health and Medicine (2nd Edition).  Cambridge UK : Cambridge University Press.

Kysar, D.A., Ayton, P., Frank, R.H., Frey, B.S., Gigerenzer, G., Glimcher, P.W., Korobkin, R., Langevoort , D.C. and Magen, S. (2006). Are heuristics a problem or a solution?  In C. Engel and G. Gigerenzer, eds (2006) Heuristics and the Law: Dahlem Workshop Report 94. Cambridge , MA.: The MIT Press.  

Ayton, P. (2005) Judgment and Decision-Making. In Braisby, N. and Gellatly, A. (Eds) Cognitive Psychology. Oxford University Press.

Ayton, P.  (2005). Subjective Probability And Human Judgment.  In B. Everitt and D. Howell (Eds)  Encyclopedia of Behavioral Statistics.  Chichester: Wiley.

Hardman, D., and Ayton, P. (2004). Argumentation and decisions. In Smith, K.,  Shanteau, J. and Johnson, P. (Eds.), Psychological investigations of competence in decision making. (pp163-187) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Ayton, P. (2001).  Contributing author to Chapter 2.6. Characterizing Uncertainty and "Levels of Confidence" in Climate Assessment. In McCarthy, J.J. Canziani, O.F., Leary, N.A., Dokken D.J. and White, K.S. (Eds.) Climate Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. New York, U.S.A. and Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.

Informal articles