Dr Mary E. Thomson of the Division of Psychology, Glasgow Caledonian University  Dr. Mary Thomson joined Glasgow Caledonian University in 1995, having previously achieved a degree in Psychology (Hons. 1st Class) in 1992. Since 1995, she has worked in three different departments within the University.   Firstly, she was employed by the Department of Consumer Studies until 1999. Here she taught consumer psychology on a variety of different courses to Year 1, Year 4 and Postgraduate students. During this period, she was awarded a doctorate, which focused on human judgement and decision making, an increasingly prominent area of cognitive psychology.

From 1999 to 2002, she was employed by the Division of Risk where she taught research methods to Year 3 students and decision psychology to Year 4 and Postgraduate students. During this time, she successfully supervised two PhD dissertations and a large number of MSc dissertations.


Finally, between 2002 and the present time, she has been employed by the Division of Psychology, where she continues to teach risk and decision courses to final year and postgraduate students. Mary has published widely in a variety of high quality academic journals, including Decision Support Systems, the European Journal of Operational Research, Risk Analysis, Risk Management: an International Journal and the International Journal of Forecasting. Her research interests are deeply rooted within cognitive psychology and decision science and have application to business decision making. As an experimental psychologist she is particularly interested in understanding why people make the decisions they do and how small changes in context can dramatically alter these decisions. She is also interested in human perceptions of risk and in identifying similarities and differences between experts and lay people.