Paul Slovic

Paul Slovic (born 1938) is an American professor of psychology at the University of Oregon and the president of Decision Research, earning his undergraduate degree at Stanford University in 1959 and his PhD in psychology at the University of Michigan in 1964. He is considered, with Baruch Fischhoff and Sarah Lichtenstein, a leading theorist and researcher in the risk perception field, with past presidency of the Society for Risk Analysis and receipt of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association in 1993.

Slovic's 1971 study with frequent collaborator Sarah Lichtenstein, "Comparison of Bayesian and Regression Approaches to the Study of Information Processing in Judgment," represents part of his broader research program on human judgment and decision making. This paper examined how people utilize information when making complex judgments, comparing different methodological approaches to understanding cognitive processes. While categorized as a laboratory study, the research itself focused on general information processing rather than deception detection or polygraph-specific applications.

Slovic's primary contributions have been in risk perception research, including development of the psychometric paradigm, the affect heuristic, and "risk as feeling" approaches. His most recent work examines "psychic numbing" and the failure to respond to mass human tragedies. His collaboration with Lichtenstein has been particularly productive, beginning in the 1960s and continuing for decades across multiple areas of judgment and decision research.

Though Slovic's work on judgment, information processing, and decision making under uncertainty has theoretical relevance to understanding how examiners process information in polygraph contexts, he does not appear to have conducted research specifically focused on polygraph testing, psychophysiological detection of deception, or credibility assessment. His inclusion in a polygraph research database likely reflects the broader applicability of his judgment and decision-making research to understanding how polygraph examiners make determinations based on physiological data.