Edward Cokely

* Prof. Cokely is considering applications for new graduate students.

Dr. Cokely serves as a Presidential Research Professor and Professor of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma. He mentors students in the Cognitive Psychology Ph.D. Program, specializing in Decision Making, Cognitive Abilities, and Human Factors Engineering. He has co-authored nearly 100 scientific papers and one book, helping secure millions of dollars in research funding (e.g., NSF, NAS, NOAA, Templeton, Medscape). He has received more than 20 research and teaching honors including premier awards for “…major contributions to the sciences of mind, brain, and behavior…” and for “…improving our understanding of the needs and processes of diverse decision makers in more than 50 countries…” (FABBS 2017 Early Career Impact Award; NSF 2013 early CAREER award). His research has been featured in Scientific American, New Scientist Magazine, Chronicle of Higher Education, BBC Futures, and New York Times and Wall Street Journal Online, among others. He also serves on the editorial boards of APA’s DECISION (2024-current) and the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied (2017-2018; 2026-current) and is a former associate editor of SJDM’s Judgment and Decision Making (2014-2020). Dr. Cokely completed his Ph.D. training in Psychology at Florida State University (2007) studying with Dr. Colleen Kelley and Dr. K. Anders Ericsson. He completed his Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (2007-2010) studying with Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, Dr. Lael Schooler, and the ABC Research Group.

Prof. Cokely specializes in Skilled Decision Making and Risk Literacy (i.e., the ability to evaluate and understand risk), and related applications (e.g., risk communications, performance assessment, cognitive training, human-in-the-loop AI). Dr. Cokely helped develop the Berlin Numeracy Test (Cokely et al., 2012, 2013, 2014), which has been used by more than 200,000 people from >150 countries and has been found to predict biases in hundreds of studies across psychology, medicine, business, public policy, engineering, education, and other disciplines. This research contributed to the discovery that statistical numeracy tests are the dominant predictors of general decision making skill and risk literacy, typically exceeding the predictive power of all other general cognitive ability tests including fluid intelligence (Cokely et al., 2018, 2026). Dr. Cokely’s research also helped establish (1) that specialized knowledge is the most influential driver of skilled decision making by experts and non-experts alike; (2) that risk literate people tend to become more informed about most risks on their own, further reducing their susceptibility to biases, misunderstanding, and misinformation; and (3) that transparent risk communications and targeted cognitive training can reduce or eliminate costly biases among people who vary widely in abilities, beliefs, and backgrounds (Garcia-Retamero & Cokely, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2017).  To help explain these findings, Dr. Cokely and colleagues developed Skilled Decision Theory (Cokely et al., 2018). The theory is based on evidence indicating that the skilled decision making of experts and non-experts largely reflects modifiable individual differences in (i) heuristic deliberation (e.g., metacognition) and (ii) representative understanding (e.g., conceptual integration of knowledge, intuition, and emotion in long-term memory). Instead of primarily relying on formal logic (e.g., System 2 overrides System 1), skilled decision makers typically avoid biases by deliberately exploring and educating their intuitions (e.g., System 2 collaborates with System 1), which empowers adaptive heuristic decision making (e.g., Gigerenzer et al., 1999; Simon, 1990). This theory provides a foundation for the Knowledge is Power Framework for Debiasing (Cokely et al., 2026; see also Cho et al., 2024), helping explain why Boosting understanding tends to be practically and ethically better than Nudging choices (e.g., Ethical Interaction Theory, Feltz & Cokely, 2024; see also Herzog & Hertwig, 2025). 

Former Ph.D. students and postdoctoral scholars who have studied with Prof. Cokely have secured positions at academic institutions (e.g., Max Planck Institute, University of Southern California, Clemson University, University of Leeds, Pompeu Fabra University, Missouri University of Science & Technology, Florida Institute of Technology, Texas Tech University, Michigan Technological University, Michigan State University, University of Michigan), and work as applied scientists in government and industry (e.g., MITRE Corporation, Siemens Healthineers, CIBEREPS Epidemiology and Public Health, Federal Aviation Administration).  Students and postdocs have co-authored research on many topics (e.g., risky decision making; misinformation and science reporting; emotional responses to risks; medical decision making; health psychology; overconfidence and metacognition; human intelligence, numeracy and expertise; cognitive biases and cognitive training; ethical biases and moral judgment; psychometrics; verbal protocol analysis; offshore oil operations; eye-tracking in training simulators; generalized and specific risk perceptions; mathematical problem solving; flight and passenger safety; tornado myths and weather-related biases; climate change beliefs; visual aids, decision aids, and transparent risk communications).  Students also routinely present original research at regional, national, and international conferences and workshops (SJDM, Psychonomics, HFES, AERA, SRA, CSS, ISIR, ERPROC, SPUDM).

For more on Risk Literacy see:

https://fabbs.org/2017/09/21/better-risk-literacy-better-decisions/

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180814-how-we-should-think-about-uncertainty