Rate My Professor Samuel G. B. Johnson

Samuel G. B. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo, where he directs the Decision, Inference, and Cognitive Economics (DICE) Lab. He holds a BS from Northwestern University and a PhD from Yale University. His research examines the intersection of cognitive science and behavioural science, using experiments and modeling to investigate basic cognitive mechanisms of thought and choice as well as their scaling into social interactions and institutions such as markets and governments. Specific areas of focus include how people remember and select tasks, the roles of sense-making and imagination in decisions under uncertainty, causal and analogical reasoning, moral judgments and decisions, and the influence of mental models and moral judgment on social, economic, and political institutions.

Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, Johnson served as an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Warwick and as a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Bath School of Management. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at University College London. In 2017, he received the Glushko Dissertation Prize from the Cognitive Science Society. Representative publications include “Conviction narrative theory: A theory of choice under radical uncertainty” (Behavioral & Brain Sciences, 2023), “Win–win denial: The psychological underpinnings of zero-sum thinking” (Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2022), and “Principles of moral accounting: How our intuitive moral sense balances rights and wrongs” (Cognition, 2021). Johnson is accepting graduate students and maintains an active research program at the University of Waterloo.