Nicholas Chater
Biography
Nicholas Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at the University of Warwick Business School.
He previously held posts at University College London (UCL) and the University of Oxford.
Chater has written about the psychology of language and decision-making. You can find his latest book, The Language Game, here.
He also holds public policy advisory roles. He is a member of the advisory board of the Behavioural Insights Team, also known as the “Nudge Unit.” He is also a member of the UK Climate Change Committee, an independent body which advises the UK Parliament.
Chater is also the co-founder of the research consultancy firm, Decision Technologies Ltd.
Interviews
Education
PhD Psychology/Cognitive Science, University of Edinburgh
MA Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge
Institutions
University of Warwick
University College London
University of Oxford
Fields
Psychology
Cognitive Science
Behavioural Science
Topics
Decision-Making
Psychology of Language
Public Policy Advisory
Member, Advisory Board to the UK Cabinet Office’s Behavioural Insights Team (“Nudge Unit”)
Member, UK Climate Change Committee
Consulting
Co-Founder, Decision Technologies Ltd
Selected Publications
Books
Christiansen, M. H. & Chater, N. (2022). The language game. London, UK: Bantam Books/New York, NY: Basic Books.
Muggleton, S. & Chater, N. (2021) (Eds). Human-like machine intelligence. Oxford, UK: Oxford UniversityPress.
Chater, N. (2018). The mind is flat. London: Penguin.
Christiansen, M. & Chater, N. (2016). Creating Language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Journal articles
Zeitoun, H., Melkonyan, T., & Chater, N. (in press). The social contract in miniature: How virtual bargaining supports team production. Academy of Management Review.
Chater, N., Zeitoun, H., & Melkonyan, T. (in press). The paradox of social interaction: Shared intentionality, we-reasoning and virtual bargaining, Psychological Review.
Sanborn, A. N., Heller, K., Austerweil, J. L., & Chater, N. (2021). REFRESH: A New Approach to Modeling Dimensional Biases in Perceptual Similarity and Categorization. Psychological Review
Oaksford, M. & Chater, N. (2020). New paradigms in the psychology of reasoning. Annual Review of Psychology, 71, 305–330.
Zhu, J., Sanborn, A., & Chater, N. (2020). The Bayesian sampler: Generic Bayesian inference causes incoherence in human probability judgments. Psychological Review, 127(5), 719-748.
Melkonyan, T., Zeitoun, H., & Chater, N. (2018). Collusion in Bertrand versus Cournot competition: A Virtual Bargaining Approach. Management Science.
Christiansen, M. & Chater, N. (2016). The Now-or-Never Bottleneck: A Fundamental Constraint on Language (Target Article). Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 39, e62.
Misyak, J., Noguchi, T., & Chater, N. (2016). Instantaneous conventions. Psychological Science, 27(12), 1550–1561.
Sanborn, A. N. & Chater, N. (2016). Bayesian brains without probabilities. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 113 (33), E4764-E4766.
Tsetsos, K., Chater, N., Moran, R., Moreland, J., Usher, M, & Summerfield, C. (2016). Economic irrationality is optimal during noisy decision-making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Tsetsos, K., Chater, N. & Usher, M. (2015). Examining the mechanisms underlying contextual preference reversal: Comment on MLBA (Trueblood, Brown and Heathcote, 2014). Psychological Review. 122, 838-847.
Misyak, J. B., & Chater, N. (2014). Virtual bargaining: a theory of social decision-making. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 369(1655), 20130487.
Misyak, J. B., Melkonyan, T., Zeitoun, H., & Chater, N. (2014). Unwritten rules: virtual bargaining underpins social interaction, culture, and society. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18(10), 512-519.
Academic Positions
1989-1990 Lecturer in Psychology, UCL
1990-1994 Lecturer in Psychology, University of Edinburgh
1994-1996 Lecturer in Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford
1996-2005 Professor of Psychology, University of Warwick
2005-2010 Professor of Cognitive and Decision Sciences, UCL
2010-present Professor of Behavioural Science, University of Warwick Business School
Public Policy Advisory
Member, UK Climate Change Committee
Advisory Board, Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insight Team (BIT), a.k.a. “The Nudge Unit”
Consulting
Co-founder of Decision Technology Ltd (25 person research consultancy)
Editorial Positions
2001-2006 Associate Editor, Cognitive Science
2005-2009 Associate Editor, Psychological Review
2009-2011 Associate Editor, Psychological Science
2012-Present Associate Editor, Management Science
2019-Present Board of Reviewing Editors, Science
Selected Grants
2006-2009 Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship on the topic Fundamental Principles of Cognition.
2011-2013 Haggard, P. & Chater, N. Decision time for free will. Templeton Foundations ($400,000 split between UCL and Warwick)
2012-2017 Chater, N. Cognitive and Social Foundations of Rationality. ERC Advanced Grant. (approximately, 2M Euro).
2012-2016 Starmer, Brown, Sugden, Chater et al. Network for Integrated Behavioural Science, ESRC (approximately, £3M)
2013-2017 Loomes, G. (PI), Chater, N. et al. Behavioural Economics of Value. Leverhulme Trust (900K)
2015-2019 Griffiths, N. (PI), Chater, N. et al. The Cooperative Car. EPSRC/Jaguar Land Rover (£2M).
2017-2021 Starmer, Brown, Sugden, Chater et al. Network for Integrated Behavioural Science 2, ESRC
Awards
1995 BPS Cognitive Psychology Award (with Mike Oaksford).
1996 Spearman Medal British BPS Annual prize for psychological research.
1997 4 th Experimental Psychology Society Prize
2009 BPS Cognitive Psychology Award (with Gordon Brown and Ian Neath).
2010 Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society
2012 Fellow of the British Academy
2014 Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science
2019 Winner PROSE Best Book Award (Category: Clinical Psychology) for The Mind is Flat.