​John Wilcox is a researcher completing a PhD at Stanford University, working in fields such as psychology, philosophy and statistics. He is advised by cognitive psychologist James McClelland and philosopher Ray Briggs. His work spans the following main areas.

​Cognitive Psychology & Epistemology
 
Much of John’s research revolves around human cognition—especially the question of how to improve human reasoning. The hope is that improving reasoning will improve decision-making and, ultimately, the quality of our lives as individuals and as a collective. Some of his innovations in this space include arguing for a new epistemological constraint on when degrees of belief are trustworthy.

​Metascience & Philosophy of Science
 
John also works in philosophy of science and metascience. He regularly reviews academic work for publishers such as the Cambridge University Press, the British Journal of Philosophy of Science and others. Together with psychologist Fiona Fidler, he authored the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on the “Reproducibility of Scientific Results”—a valuable resource for navigating scientific and philosophical issues surrounding the so-called replication crisis. His main innovations in this space also include articulating a new Bayesian account of some important concepts in philosophy of science.

Moral Psychology & Ethics
 
John also explores moral psychology and ethics. He is also the co-director and lead researcher at an interdisciplinary research team called The Metachangemakers Project. The project focuses on how to cultivate changemakers—that is, people with the motivation and competencies to make a positive impact on the world, to contribute to collective wellbeing and to address societal challenges.

His innovations in this space also include developing a new solution to the so-called “moral twin earth problem” in metaethics.

You can learn more about metachangemaking from his team’s presentation at the first Life Improvement Science conference (to the left).