Winston Sieck, founder and president of Global Cognition, is a cognitive psychologist interested in applications of cognitive science to cultural and social issues. He studies how people from diverse cultures learn, think, and make decisions. He also investigates the strategies that cross-cultural experts use to learn about new cultures quickly.

Dr. Sieck received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan in 2000, and M.A. in statistics from the same university in 1995. He taught statistics and served as a research fellow at the University of Michigan (2000-2001), and then worked as a post-doctoral researcher in quantitative psychology at Ohio State University (2001-2003). He then joined Klein Associates, a small firm specializing in cognitive-field research and naturalistic decision making, serving there for several years before striking out to found Global Cognition in 2011.

Primary Interests:

Applied Social Psychology
Attitudes and Beliefs
Communication, Language
Culture and Ethnicity
Group Processes
Judgment and Decision Making
Persuasion, Social Influence
Social Cognition

Applied Social Psychology
Attitudes and Beliefs
Communication, Language
Culture and Ethnicity
Group Processes

Judgment and Decision Making
Persuasion, Social Influence
Social Cognition

Research Group or Laboratory:

Global Cognition
Interactive Map

Journal Articles:

Rasmussen, L. J., Sieck, W. R., & Smart, P. (2009). What is a good plan? Cultural variations in expert planners’ concepts of plan quality. Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making, 3, 228-249.
Sieck, W. R., & Arkes, H. R. (2005). The recalcitrance of overconfidence and its contribution to decision aid neglect. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 18, 29-53.
Sieck, W. R., Merkle, E. C., & Van Zandt, T. (2007). Option fixation: A cognitive contributor to overconfidence. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 103, 68-83.
Sieck, W. R., Quinn, C. N., & Schooler, J. W. (1999). Justification effects on the judgment of analogy. Memory & Cognition, 27, 844-855.
Sieck, W. R., Smith, J., Grome, A. P., Veinott, E., & Mueller, S. T. (in press). Violent and peaceful crowd reactions in the Middle East: Cultural experiences and expectations. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression.
Sieck, W. R., & Yates, J. F. (2001). Overconfidence effects in category learning: A comparison of connectionist and exemplar memory models. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 27, 1003-1021.
Sieck, W., & Yates, J. F. (1997). Exposition effects on decision making: Choice and confidence in choice. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70, 207-219.
Stone, E. R, Sieck, W. R., Bull, B. E., Yates, J. F., Parks, S. C., & Rush, C. J. (2003). Foreground-background salience: Explaining the effects of graphical displays on risk avoidance. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 90, 19-36.
Yates, J. F., Ji, L.-J., Oka, T., Lee, J.-W., Shinotsuka, H., & Sieck, W. R. (2010). Indecisiveness and culture: Incidence, values, and thoroughness. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 41, 428-444.
Yates, J. F., Lee, J., Shinotsuka, H., Patalano, A. L., & Sieck, W. R. (1998). Cross-cultural variations in probability accuracy: Beyond general knowledge overconfidence? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 74, 89-117.

Other Publications:

McHugh, A. P., Smith, J., & Sieck, W. R. (2008). Cultural variations in mental models of collaborative decision making. In J. M. C. Schraagen, L. Militello, T. Ormerod, & R. Lipshitz (Eds.), Macrocognition and naturalistic decision making. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
Phillips, J. K., Klein, G., & Sieck, W. R. (2004). Expertise in judgment and decision making: A case for training intuitive decision skills. In D. J. Koehler & N. Harvey (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making.
Rasmussen, L. J., Sieck, W. R., & Osland, J. (2010). Using cultural models of decision making to assess and develop cultural sensemaking competence. In D. Schmorrow & D. Nicholson (Eds.), Advances in Cross-Cultural Decision Making, Boca Raton: CRC Press / Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Sieck, W. R. (2010). Cultural network analysis: Method and application. In D. Schmorrow & D. Nicholson (Eds.), Advances in Cross-Cultural Decision Making (pp. 260-269). Boca Raton: CRC Press / Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Sieck, W. R., Grome, A. P., Smith, J., & Rababy, D. A. (2010). Expert cultural sensemaking in the management of Middle Eastern crowds. In K. L. Mosier & U. M. Fischer (Eds.), Informed by Knowledge: Expert Performance in Complex Situations. Taylor and Francis.
Yates, J. F., Lee, J.-W., Sieck, W. R., Choi, I., & Price, P. C. (2002). Probability judgment across cultures. In T. Gilovich, D. Griffin, & D. Kahneman (Eds.), Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Winston R. Sieck
1771 Southview Drive
Yellow Springs, OH 45387
United States

Phone: (937) 238-7246