Category: ACSHF

Robert West of DePauw University to Present Lecture Feb. 8

Dr. Robert West, the Elizabeth P. Allen Distinguished University Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, DePauw University, will present a lecture on Monday, February 8, 2021, at 2:00 p.m., via online meeting.

The title of Dr. West’s lecture is, “Why Josh Stole the Password: A Decision Neuorscience Approach to Insider Threat in Information Security.”

The lecture is hosted by the Human-Centered Computing (HCC) research group of the Institute of Computing and Cybersystems (ICC) and the Department of Cognitive and Learning Sciences (CLS).

Robert West Bio

Dr. Robert West received his Ph.D from the University of South Carolina in Cognitive Development, and completed postdoctoral work at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto, studying cognitive aging and cognitive neuroscience.

He has been on faculty at the University of Notre Dame, Iowa State University, and is currently the Elizabeth P. Allen Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at DePauw University. He is a fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, the Psychonomic Society, and the Midwestern Psychological Association; and a founding member of the NeuroIS Society.

West’s research interests and publications span the areas of decision neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience of aging, and cognitive control. He has served as the associate editor for the Journals of Gerontology: Psychological Science, and is currently associate editor for Psychology and Aging.

Lecture Abstract

Cybercrime has a significant impact on nations, corporations, and individuals. Violations of information security can reduce consumer confidence and valuation at the corporate level, and jeopardize social and financial well-being at the personal level. In this talk, I will explore the findings of some of my recent research in order to demonstrate the utility of a decision neuroscience approach to providing insight into the neural correlates of ethical decision making in the context of information security.

ACSHF Forum Monday

Beth Veinott

One challenge affecting a variety of teams, such as software development, engineering, military, and crisis management, is overconfidence in the effectiveness of their plans.  Referred to as the planning fallacy, Buehler et al. (1994) suggests that ignoring past failures is a key cognitive element in this phenomenon. This talk summarizes recent experiments examinin the effect of counterfactual reasoning strategies, thinking about what might have happened under different circumstances, on people’s reasons, confidence and predictions.

Leveraging a collaborative, structured analytic technique called the Premortem, this project extends research on counterfactual reasoning to estimates in planning. The results will be discussed in the context of advances in machine learning, AI, and crowdsourcing that have changed the information available to teams.