Zoltan Dienes

Professor of Psychology
School of Psychology
University of Sussex
Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK

<= me in Tibet

Email: dienes@sussex.ac.uk
Phone: +44 1273 876638

Teaching

I organize Conscious and Unconscious Mental Processes, a final year option module; Perspectives on Psychology, a final year core module. I also teach philosophy of science in the masters module Ethics, Philosophy, and Methods, and a series of lectures on hypnosis in the first year undergraduate module Psychology Now.

Research publications

I am exploring ways of changing common practice in statistical inference by using Bayesian methods. I am interested in using Bayes factors to test theories as an alternative to significance testing. I am also interested in Registered Reports as a means for overcoming some problems in how science currently operates. I am a co-founder of PCI Registered Reports.

I am interested in the distinction between conscious and unconscious mental states, both states of knowing and intending. For example, much of the knowledge we acquire for dealing with the world appears to be unconscious. By what methods can we determine whether knowledge is conscious or unconscious? What type of structures can be learnt unconsciously?

Many people appear to be able to intend to perform some behavioural or cognitive act without being aware of their intentions; the result is that people, to varying degrees, can create new experiences that do not correspond to reality, without knowing that they are doing so. I call this ability phenomenological control - it is involved for example in responding to hypnotic suggestions. But it may be involved in many other contexts. What can be achieved with phenomenological control? How does it operate differently from mindfulness?