MCCHE Precision Convergence Webinar Series with Tom Griffiths
Scaling up experimental psychology: From experiments to algorithms
By Tom Griffiths
Princeton University, New Jersey
With High-Level Panel of Leaders in Science, Technology, On-the-Ground Action, and Policy
The basic methods of experimental psychology have remained essentially the same since the field was first developed, but the technologies available to researchers have changed significantly. I will argue that modern technology — in particular the availability of large numbers of participants and the ability to use computers to make the tasks presented to one participant depend on the responses of others — has the potential to change the way we conduct behavioural experiments. I will talk about two ways to scale up experimental psychology: running many conditions in parallel to exhaustively sample stimulus spaces rather than relying on sparse theory-driven designs, and studying effects at the level of groups rather than individuals. I will present case studies of this approach in the setting of decision-making, and discuss the implications of the results for how we develop theories about human behaviour.
About the speaker
Tom Griffiths is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness and Culture in the Departments of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University. His research explores connections between human and machine learning, using ideas from statistics and artificial intelligence to understand how people solve the challenging computational problems they encounter in everyday life. Tom completed his PhD in Psychology at Stanford University in 2005, and taught at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley before moving to Princeton. He has received awards for his research from organizations ranging from the American Psychological Association to the National Academy of Sciences, and is a co-author of the book Algorithms to Live By, introducing ideas from computer science and cognitive science to a general audience.
About the series
The Precision Convergence series is launched to catalyze unique synergy between, on the one hand, novel partnerships across sciences, sectors and jurisdictions around targeted domains of real-world solutions, and on the other hand, a next generation convergence of AI with advanced research computing and other data and digital architectures such as PSC’s Bridges-2, and supporting data sharing frameworks such as HuBMAP, informing in a real time as possible the design, deployment and monitoring of solutions for adaptive real-world behaviour and context.
The Precision Convergence Webinar Series is co-hosted by The McGill Centre for the Convergence of Health and Economics (MCCHE) at McGill University and The Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, a joint computational research centre between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
