Ben Newell

Ben Newell is Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Deputy Head of the School of Psychology at UNSW Sydney. His research focuses on the cognitive processes underlying judgment, choice and decision-making and the application of this knowledge to environmental, medical, financial and forensic contexts. He is the primary author of the leading text, Straight Choices: The Psychology of Decision Making - a book described by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman as “a rare combination - an enjoyable read that beginners will like and a serious text that scholars will study”.

Ben has worked with industry and government partners on projects including climate change communication, and retirement wealth-planning. A key theme of much of this work is over-coming the myopic thinking that tends to cloud our judgment when we are making decisions about an uncertain future.

His work has been published in several major journals including Nature Climate Change, Psychological Review, Annual Review of Environment & Resources and the Journal of Environmental Psychology. His work is often discussed in the media including in TIME Magazine, The Guardian, BBC, ABC and WIRED Magazine. Ben writes regularly for the online newspaper The Conversation on topics including risk-taking, ‘nudging’ behaviour, intuition, and the psychology of climate change.

Ben is a member of the Academic Advisory Panel of the Behavioural Economics Team of the Australian Government where he advises on the application of psychological knowledge to evidence-based policy.