Piers Fleming

Research

Overview

I am a psychologist interested in the psychology of risk, including judgments, perceptions and behaviour. I am particularly focussed upon digital and online cyber risks. I have used a range of approaches including individual differences, surveys, psycho-biological approaches and incentivised economic games (where decisions have financial consequences). I am also particularly interested in psychological aspects of risk assessment. I have a wider interest in psychological processes involved with risk judgments across a broad range of hazards including gambling, climate change, social work decisions and health & medicines. See the full list of publications.

Current work: AI use and learning

My current research looks at how people use generative AI, and what it means for learning. See also AI in education and the Brain First music video on using AI well.

Cyber risks

I am interested in risk-taking and regulation across different types of digital media. Digital risks are often unclear or unknown. They are not visceral in the way that physical risks are. To date I have carried out work in three main areas:

  1. Unlawful file-sharing (also known as digital piracy), with the Centre for Creativity, Regulation, Enterprise and Technology (CREATe), investigating risk and decision making with digital media. See a scoping review, a meta-analysis and an examination of risk, benefit and emotion in file-sharing.
  2. Online privacy and people's understanding of that risk. See a paper on repeated question effects on privacy disclosures and a paper on the role of cultural differences in the relationship between valuing and protecting personal data.
  3. A small exploratory project with the Norwich Good Economy Commission on how people at the margins of internet use understand cyber-safety, aiming to reduce psychological barriers to digital inclusion. The project is now complete.

Risk assessment

Risk assessment and the identification of hazards is a very important step in protecting people. However, there is considerable variability in hazard identification. I am interested in what psychological factors might influence risk assessment. See this paper.

Teaching tools

I have built a set of interactive risk tasks for teaching, including the Iowa Gambling Task, the Balloon Analogue Risk Task and a delay discounting task. They run in the browser. See teaching tools.

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