University of Connecticut
Edwin Way Teale Lecture Series on Nature and the Environment
Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 4:00pm (EST)
Gordon Pennycook
Associate Professor and Himan Brown Faculty Fellow,
Cornell University
"Does Evidence Even Matter? Using AI to Debunk Climate Misperceptions"
Please join us for an in-person Teale lecture, on Thursday, November 13 at 4:00pm in the Konover Auditorium in the Dodd Center on the UConn Storrs campus.
Pennycook’s research focuses on understanding the nature of human reasoning and decision-making. Many of homo sapiens’ problems as a species come from errors that we make during reasoning and decision-making – from global warming to health issues (including, but not limited to, the spread of pandemics) to political polarization and misinformation – and, thus, understanding why people make these errors is a major focus. His research sits at the intersection of cognitive and social psychology and most recently, he has been interested in the use of social media data for social science. His teams have been testing various interventions against misinformation on social media, including accuracy prompts, fact-checking/debunking, crowdsourcing, labeling/warnings, and psychological “inoculation“. Pennycook has published over 120 peer-reviewed articles, including in journals such as Nature, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Nature Human Behavior, Psychological Science, and Trends in Cognitive Science. He has received several awards, such as the Association for Psychological Sciences “Rising Star” award. With his team, he won an “Ig Nobel Peace Prize” in 2016. His work has been funded by numerous sources, not least of which are the Gates Foundation, The U.S. Department of Defense, and the John Templeton Foundation.
Although the talk will be in-person, it is also available to watch (live) on the UConn Kaltura platform. The live stream link is on the Teale Series web page: https://environment.institute.uconn.edu/teale-lecture-series/
This event is free and open to the public. If you need accommodation to access or participate, please contact CSMNHinfo@uconn.edu
For more information, contact: Dr. Erin Kuprewicz at csmnhinfo@uconn.edu