Philip Fernbach

book

Sloman, S. A. & Fernbach, P. M. (2017). The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. Riverhead Books: New York.

Major Reviews:

• The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Pick)

• The Washington Post

• The Economist

• The Financial Times

• The New Yorker

• Publisher's Weekly

• Psychology Today

popular press articles

Philip Fernbach and Daniel Walters, Why are investors so cocky? “They often have a biased memory – and selectively forget their money-losing stocks.” The Conversation, November 2, 2021.

Philip Fernbach and Daniel Walters, “Keep losing money on cryptos and meme stocks? Investors can’t trust their memory, new research shows.” MarketWatch, September 7, 2021.

Philip Fernbach and Abigail Sussman, “Teaching people about money doesn’t seem to make them any smarter about money – here’s what might.” MarketWatch, October 10, 2018.

Andrew Long, Philip Fernbach and Bart De Langhe, “The idea of ‘investing in what you know’ is more dangerous than you think.” MarketWatch, July 18, 2018.

Philip Fernbach and Steven Sloman, "Why We Believe Obvious Untruths." New York Times, March 3, 2017.

Philip Fernbach and Steven Sloman, "We Should be Asking More Stupid Questions." LinkedIn Pulse, May 6, 2017.

Philip Fernbach and Steven Sloman, "Cognitive science shows that humans are smarter as a group than they are on their own." Quartz, April 18, 2017.

Bart de Langhe, Philip Fernbach and Donald R. Lichtenstein, “High Online User Ratings Don’t Actually Mean You’re Getting a Quality Product.” Harvard Business Review, July 4th, 2016.

Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, "I'm Right (For Some Reason). Why Partisans Can't Explain Their Views." New York Times, October 21, 2012.

journal articles

*equal authorship

Light, N. & Fernbach, P.M. (in press). Keep it Simple? Consumer Perceptions of Brand Simplicity and Risk. Journal of Marketing Research.

Lynch, J.G., Fernbach, P.M. & Kan, C. (2023). Auditing the Value of Empirical Audits. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Fernbach, P. M. & Bogard, J. E. (2023). Conspiracy Theory as Individual and Group Behavior: Observations from the Flat Earth International Conference. Topics in Cognitive Science, 16 (2), 187-205.

Light, N., Fernbach, P.M., Rabb, N., Geana, M.V. & Sloman, S.A. (2022). Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views on controversial scientific issues. Science Advances, 8 (29) 1-10.

Garcia, C. A., et al. (2022). Strategy games to improve environmental policymaking. Nature Sustainability, 5, 464-471.

Walters, D. J. & Fernbach, P. M. (2021). Investor memory of past performance is positively biased and associated with overconfidence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (36).

Reinholtz, N., Fernbach, P. M. and De Langhe, B. (2021). Do people understand the benefit of diversification?, Management Science, 67 (12), 7322-7343.

Fernbach, P. M. & Van Boven, L. (2021). False polarization: Cognitive mechanisms and potential solutions. Current Opinion in Psychology, 43, 1-6.

Waeber, P. O., et al. (2021). Choices we make in time of crisis. Sustainability, 13(6), 3578.

Fernbach, P. M. & Light, N. (2020). Knowledge is shared. Psychological Inquiry, 31 (1), 26-28. (commentary on target article by Clark and Winegard).

De Langhe, B. & Fernbach, P. M. (2019) The dangers of categorical thinking. Harvard Business Review, 97 (5), 80-91.

Rabb, N., Fernbach, P.M. & Sloman, S.A. (2019). Individual representation in a community of knowledge. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23 (10), 891-902.

Fernbach, P.M., Light, N., Scott, S.E., Inbar, Y. & Rozin, P. (2019). Extreme opponents of genetically modified foods know the least but think they know the most. Nature Human Behaviour, 3, 251-256.

Li, M., Colby, H. & Fernbach, P. M. (2019). Efficiency for lives, equality for everything else: How allocation preference shifts across domains. Social Psychological and Personality Science. 10 (5), 697-707.

Long, A., Fernbach, P. M.* & De Langhe, B.* (2018). Circle of Incompetence: Sense of Understanding as an Improper Guide to Investment Risk. Journal of Marketing Research, 55 (4), 474-488.

Sloman, S. A. & Fernbach, P. M. (2018). Reasoning as Collaboration. The American Journal of Psychology, 131 (4), 493-496. (Book Review of Mercier and Sperber’s The Enigma of Reason).

Walters, D. J., Fernbach, P. M., Fox, C. R. & Sloman, S. A. (2017). Known unknowns: A critical determinant of confidence and calibration. Management Science, 63 (12), 4298-4307.

De Langhe, B.*, Fernbach, P. M.* & Lichtenstein, D. R.* (2016). Navigating by the stars: Investigating the actual and perceived validity of online user ratings. Journal of Consumer Research, 42, 817-833.

• The linked PDF includes the main paper, three commentaries on the paper by Rob Kozinets, Itamar Simonson, and Russ Winer and Pete Fader, and our reply to the commentaries. Click here for the the Web Appendix.

• Our commentary response should be cited as: De Langhe, B., Fernbach, P. M. & Lichtenstein, D. R. (2016). Star Wars: Response to Simonson, Winer/Fader, and Kozinets. Journal of Consumer Research, 42, 850-857.

Fernbach, P. M., Kan, C. & Lynch, J. G. Jr. (2015). Squeezed: Coping with constraint through efficiency and prioritization. Journal of Consumer Research, 41 (5), 1204-1227.

• Web Appendix 1

• Web Appendix 2

McGraw, A. P., Schiro, J. L. & Fernbach, P. M. (2015). Not a problem: A downside of humorous appeals. Journal of Marketing Behavior, 1 (2), 187-208.

Fernbach, P. M., Hagmayer, Y. & Sloman, S. A. (2014). Effort denial in self-deception. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 123 (1), 1-8.

Fernbach, P. M., Sloman, S. A., St. Louis, R. & Shube, J. N. (2013). Explanation fiends and foes: How mechanistic detail determines understanding and preference. Journal of Consumer Research, 39 (5), 1115-1131.

Fernbach, P. M., Rogers, T., Fox, C. R. & Sloman, S. A. (2013). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science, 24 (6), 939-945.

Fernbach, P. M. & Erb, C. D. (2013). A quantitative causal model theory of conditional reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39 (5), 1327-1343.

Fernbach P. M. & Rehder, B. (2013). Cognitive shortcuts in causal inference. Argument & Computation, 4 (1), 64-88.

Sloman, S. A., Fernbach, P. M. & Ewing, S. (2012). A causal model of intentionality judgment. Mind & Language, 27 (2), 154-180.

Fernbach, P. M., Macris, D. M. & Sobel, D. M. (2012). Which one made it go? The emergence of diagnostic reasoning in preschoolers. Cognitive Development, 27 (1), 39-53.

Fernbach, P. M., Darlow, A. & Sloman, S. A. (2011). When good evidence goes bad: The weak evidence effect in judgment and decision-making. Cognition, 119, 459-467.

Fernbach, P. M., Darlow A. & Sloman, S. A. (2011). Asymmetries in predictive and diagnostic reasoning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 140 (2), 168-185.

Fernbach, P. M. & Sloman, S. A. (2011). Don’t throw out the Bayes with the bathwater . Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 34 (4), 198-199. (Commentary on target article by Jones and Love)

Swirsky, C. L., Fernbach, P. M. & Sloman, S. A. (2011). An illusion of control modulates the reluctance to tempt fate. Judgment and Decision Making, 6 (7), 688-696.

Sloman, S. A. & Fernbach, P. M. (2011). Human representation and reasoning about complex causal systems. Information, Knowledge, Systems Management, 10, 1-15.

Fernbach, P. M., Darlow A. & Sloman, S. A. (2010). Neglect of alternative causes in predictive but not diagnostic reasoning. Psychological Science, 21(3), 329-336.

Sloman, S. A., Fernbach, P. M. & Hagmayer, Y. (2010). Self deception requires vagueness. Cognition, 115 (2), 268-281.

Fernbach, P. M. & Sloman, S. A. (2009). Causal learning with local computations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35 (3), 678-693.

book chapters

Hagmayer, Y. & Fernbach P. M. (2016). Causality in Decision Making. In M. Waldmann (Ed.) Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning. Oxford, UK, Oxford University Press.

Sloman, S. A., Fernbach, P. M. & Ewing, S. (2009). Causal models: The representational infrastructure for moral judgment. In D. Bartels, C. W. Bauman, L. J. Skitka, & D. Medin (Eds.) Moral judgment and decision making: The psychology of learning and motivation (Vol 50). San Diego, CA: Elsevier.

Sloman, S. A. & Fernbach, P. M. (2008). The value of rational analysis: An assessment of causal reasoning and learning. In Chater, N. & Oaksford, M. (Eds.). The probabilistic mind: Prospects for rational models of cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

proceedings papers

Fernbach, P. M. & Darlow, A. (2010). Causal conditional reasoning and conditional likelihood. In S. Ohlsson & R. Catrambone (Eds.). Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Fernbach, P. M. & Darlow, A. (2009). Causal asymmetry in inductive judgments. In N. A. Taatgen & H. van Rijn (Eds.). Proceedings of the 31st Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Fernbach, P. M., Linson-Gentry, P & Sloman, S. A. (2007). Causal beliefs influence the perception of temporal order. In D. S. McNamara & J. G. Trafton (Eds.). Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

Fernbach, P. M. (2006). Sampling assumptions and the size principle in property induction. In R. Sun & N. Miyake (Eds.). Proceedings of the 28th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

unpublished papers

Fernbach, P. M. (2008). Explanation and confirmation in inductive inference. Preliminary Examination Paper. Brown University.