Dr Claire Heard

RESEARCH INTERESTS

I am a social psychology and judgment & decision-making psychologist. I am interested in the application of psychological theories from the social and judgement and decision-making domains to applied questions. In particular, my main research interests focus on investigating risk communication, risk perception and decision making primarily within the public health and emergency response domains.

CURRENT ACADEMIC EMPLOYEMENT

LSE Fellow in Decision Science (London School of Economics) 2019 -

From September 2019, I will be employed as a LSE Fellow in Management (Decision Science) in the Department of Management. Here, I will be contributing to the research activities and the teaching in the department. I will be contributing to teaching at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels on topics related to decision science.

PREVIOUS ACADEMIC EMPLOYMENT

Research Associate (King’s College London) 2017-2019

Here I was employed as a post-doctoral research associate on the NIHR-funded First-aid Project. This project investigates communication and behaviours of the public during emergency events. Specifically, it investigates communication of first-aid information to the public and their behaviours in emergencies. This post-doc has given me the opportunity to extend my methodological expertise to qualitative research methods. In this programme of research, through its three-stage process, I have conducted a scoping review, -to-one practitioner interviews and small focus groups with the general public. Analysis of the scoping review has been accepted for publication in Disasters and two manuscripts based on a combined analysis of the interview and focus group data are in preparation.

During this time, I have also taken on some administrative duties (acting as the travel coordinator and minute taker for our research team), support duties (providing advice and support to PhD students within our research team) and gained experience in grant preparation and budgeting. This final experience led to a successful NIHR project bid to investigate risk communication surrounding CBRN (chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear) events. In particular, the project, which started in May is investigating risk communication surrounding how to deal with an acid attack emergency. Finally, I have also gained lecturing experience through becoming a guest lecturer on risk communication and nudging behaviour in the Department of Geography.

Graduate Teaching Assistant and Coursework Marker (King’s College London) 2015-2017

Weekly seminar/practical leader and/or coursework marker for the following psychology modules: 1) Psychology & Society, 2) Personality and Individual Differences, 3) Research Methods 1 & 2, 4) Choices: Automaticity, Autonomy and Addiction, and 5) Psychology I (run by the Department of Neuroscience in School of Bioscience Education).

I typically taught between 15-25 students per session. In the Social Psychology, Research Methods and Choices modules, I acted as a weekly seminar class leader, where I created my own seminar materials to complement the seminar brief provided by the module coordinator. In particular, where I felt it was appropriate, I embedded applied examples and varied the type of teaching method (e.g. interactive, visual, written, discussion). From student feedback, these were very much appreciated. In the Choices module, which covered the topics of habitual behaviours, judgement and decision making, and addiction, I also ran practical sessions, several of which prepared students for the coursework where the students designed a research study and analysed the results. For all six of the modules above, I acted as a coursework marker, and marked: research reports, essays, thought pieces and question-answer worksheets.

Graduate Lab Assistant/Demonstrator and Coursework Marker ( of ) 2013-2015

Weekly/fortnightly practical class assistant, coursework marker and/or exam invigilator for: 1) Statistics for Psychologists, and 2) Research Methods

I usually taught between 20-50 students per session. The Statistics for Psychologists module consisted of weekly practical sessions, where participants completed a series of statistical software exercises and my role was to assist students in these tasks where needed. One skill I developed within this module was an ability to spot students, in need of support, who may be otherwise too shy/nervous to ask for it. The Research Methods module typically consisted of fortnightly sessions, where I assisted students with the data collection and analysis of each of their four research reports. For both of these modules, I acted as a marker for the coursework, marking statistical exercise/mathematics test sheets and research reports.

UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

King’s College London (KCL) PhD in Psychology 2014-2018

PhD Thesis: Understanding, perception and presentation of health (or event) risks: The role of format, language and presentation layout.

Consisting of three concurrently-run strands of research, this project investigated the influence of format, language and presentation layout on understanding and perception of health-related information. Using a mixture of experimental, survey-based and process-tracing techniques (eye-tracking), it examined novel speed-of-ageing metaphors, emotion-laden language, and directed visual attention to information in different tabular layouts.

Supervisors: Dr Tim Rakow (KCL), Dr Mike Aitken (KCL) & Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter ()

Note: PhD was originally started at and transferred to King’s College London in Year 2.

University of Essex

MSc Research Methods in Psychology (With Distinction) 2013-2014

BSc Psychology (With Honours First Class) 2010-2013

AWARDS & FUNDING Date Awarded

Named researcher on £55,159 NIHR funded project: “The Impact of Risk Communication 2018 on the Willingness of the Public to Engage in First Aid during CBRN Events”.

4-year Collaborative Masters + PhD studentship funded jointly by the ESRC and the 2013 Winton Fund/University of Cambridge.

Micheal Lodge Memorial Prize (Final Year Undergraduate) for third-best final-year 2013 mark in cohort

PUBLICATIONS

Peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings

Heard, C.L., Pearce, J.M, & Rogers, M.B. (2019) Mapping the first-aid training landscape: uptake, knowledge, confidence and willingness to deliver first aid in disasters/emergencies – a scoping review. Disasters. https://doi.org/10.1111/disa.12374.

Heard, C.L., Rakow, T., & Foulsham, T. (2018). Understanding the effect of information presentation order and orientation on information search and treatment evaluation. Medical Decision Making, 38(6), 646- 657. Heard, C.L., Rakow, T., & Spiegelhalter, D. (2018). Using Speed-of-Ageing Metaphors in Health Communication: A comparison of the comprehension and perception for speed-of-ageing and hazard ratio formats. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 32, 81-93. Heard, C.L., Rakow, T., & Foulsham, T. (2017). The role of presentation order and orientation on information search and evaluations: An eye-tracking study. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E.J. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2174-2180). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society. Rakow, T., Heard, C.L., & Newell, B.R. (2015). Meeting three challenges in risk communication: phenomena, numbers and emotions. Policy Insights from the Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 2, 147-156. Magazine articles Heard, C. (2012). Neurotransmitters: The effect on gambling behaviour in recreational and pathological gamblers. Psych-talk, 72, 8-10. Articles in preparation

Heard, C.L., & Rakow, T. (In Preparation). Extending the insensitivity-to-probability effect to evidence-based risk perception: Investigating the role of labelling and emotional preconceptions. Risk Analysis. Heard, C.L., Pearce, J.M., & Rogers, M.B. (in preparation). Context matters: type of scenario influences perceptions of emergency helping. Heard, C.L., Pearce, J.M., & Rogers, M.B. (in preparation). First-aid training perceptions, uptake and knowledge – A comparison of UK trainers and the UK public.

PRESENTATIONS/CONFERENCES

BPS Social Psychology Section Annual Conference, York 2019 (Talk): The unresponsive or responsive bystander?: Understanding what influences emergency helping actions in public emergencies. Public Health (PHE 2018) Conference, Warwick (Poster): Charting the first-aid training and emergency helping landscape: Evidence from a scoping review and practitioner interviews. Cognitive Science Society (CogSci2017), London (Poster): The role of presentation order and orientation on information search and evaluations: An eye-tracking study. JDMx Early Career Researchers Conference 2016, Basel (Talk): Presenting risk and benefits: The effect of order and orientation on search behaviour and subsequent perceptions (evaluations) of treatments: An eye- tracking study. Subjective Probability Utility & Decision Making (SPUDM) 2015, Budapest (Poster): The effect of risk type on perceptions of graphically presented risk. Summer Institute on Bounded Rationality, Max Planck Institute, Berlin 2015 (Poster): The effect of presentation format on the perception of lifetime behaviour benefits and risks. INVITED TALKS & GUEST LECTURES

Centre for Primary Care and Public Health 2019 Public Health and Emergency Response: Communication and Behaviour

Guest Lecturer: Communicating Risk and Nudging Behaviour 2018 Module: Environmental Risk, Governance and Society (Geography Department – King’s College London)

OTHER RESEARCH & ADMINISTRATION ROLES

Journal Article Reviewer (Risk Analysis, Experimental Psychology and Quarterly Journal for 2016-2019 Experimental Psychology

Mentor for Masters-level Psychology Students 2015

PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS

BPS Chartered Status

Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Elected Associate of King’s College (AKC)