grpennycook@gmail.com / gordon.pennycook@cornell.edu

Google Scholar / CV / List of misinformation-related papers / List of human-AI dialogue papers

Faculty Profile / BlueSky / LinkedIn / OSF

Background and Education

I am the Dorothy and Ariz Mehta Faculty Leadership Fellow and Associate Professor of Psychology at Cornell University. I am also an Adjunct Professor at University of Regina’s Hill/Levene Schools of Business.

I am an associate editor for Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, a consulting editor for Judgment and Decision Making, and a member of the editorial board for Thinking & Reasoning. I was elected to be a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists in 2020. I received early career awards for the Association for Psychological Science (“Rising Star”), the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour, & Cognitive Science, the International Social Cognition Network, and the Psychonomics Society. In 2016, we received the Ig Nobel Peace Prize for our work on the psychology of bullshit. Our bit in the (highly amusing) ceremony can be found here. Our 2023 paper on cross-cultural interventions against misinformation received the Behavioral Science & Policy Association top paper award. Finally, our 2024 paper on debunking conspiracies using AI won the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize for top paper in Science that year.

I completed my Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree in 2009 under the supervision of Dr. Valerie Thompson at the University of Saskatchewan (Canada). In 2010, I moved to the University of Waterloo (also Canada) to work with Dr. Jonathan Fugelsang and Dr. Derek Koehler, receiving a Master of Arts degree in 2011 and a PhD in 2016. I then completed a two-year Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University (Department of Psychology) with Dr. Dave Rand and taught at the Yale School of Management with Dr. Shane Frederick. I was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at the University of Regina from 2018-2023. I then moved to Cornell and took an Associate Professor position.

I have continued my longstanding collaboration with Dave Rand, who has since moved to Cornell. We run, in essence, a joint lab. For an annotated list of misinformation-related papers from our collaboration, click here. For annotated list of our human-AI dialogue papers along with Tom Costello at CMU, our former postdoc), click here.

I grew up in Carrot River, a lovely but remote* town of ~1,200 in Saskatchewan, Canada. [*Closest Walmart is ~2 hours away]

Research Interests

The basic focus of my research is on understanding the nature of human reasoning and decision-making – particularly as it relates to errors and misperceptions. A lot of our problems as a species come from errors that we make during reasoning and decision-making – from global warming to health issues to political polarization and misinformation. Understanding why people make these errors is important if we ever want to fix them. My research, therefore, sits at the intersection of cognitive and social psychology.

My general view is that many of the most consequential errors that we make are due more to a lack of reasoning (and an overreliance on intuition) than too much motivated reasoning (e.g., due to political identity). A review of my theoretical perspective can be found here. A recent review of our research on misinformation can be found here.

More broadly, I investigate the distinction between intuitive processes (“gut feelings”) and more deliberative (“analytic”) reasoning processes and am principally interested in the causes (a) and consequences (b) of analytic thinking. That is, what makes us think and why is it (thinking) important? However, I have fairly broad interests, although most are organized under these two broad research programs (causes versus consequences). I’ve published on religious belief, sleep paralysis, morality, creativity, smartphone use, health beliefs (e.g., homeopathy), climate change rejection, pseudo-profound bullshit, delusional ideation, fake news (and misinformation more broadly), political ideology, science beliefs, and conspiracy beliefs (in roughly that order). I am also interested in the methodological and theoretical issues that pertain to the measurement of cognitive reflection and motivated reasoning. I am interested in the use of social media data for social science (both correlational and experimental). We have been testing various interventions against misinformation on social media, including accuracy prompts, fact-checking/debunking, crowdsourcing, labeling/warnings, and psychological “inoculation“. Here is an annotated and dynamic list of misinformation-related publications: List of misinformation-related papers.

Our most recent research focuses on leveraging AI technology (Large Language Models) to do more advanced experiments (for a pitch on why this is important, see here). Much of this research have been on AI persuasion, such as this paper in Science where we used AI to debunk conspiracy theories. Here is an annotated and dynamic list of AI-dialogue publications: List of human-AI dialogue papers.

Another theme in my work is that I really enjoy developing new or improved ways of measuring important psychological phenomenon. For example, see here for a guide on one approach to developing materials to run studies on fake news and misinformation. I have also created a scale for assessing receptivity to pseudo-profound bullshit. Another example that I’m excited about is a new way to assess dispositional overconfidence that does not fall prey to performance-related confounds. Check out this paper (and this one) for the evidence, and this paper showing that conspiracy believers are particularly overconfident.

Note for Potential Students

I am recruiting a graduate student in the upcoming year (2027). If you’re curious about our grad program at Cornell, please visit https://psychology.cornell.edu/graduate-admissions-requirements for more information. Please feel free to send me an email outlining your research interests. Note that, for equity reasons, I don’t interview students prior to the application deadline. Having said that, feel free to let me know if you’re planning on applying!