University of Gothenburg
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Carl Martin Allwood

Professor

Department of Psychology
Telephone
+46 727-19 00 52
Mail
cma@psy.gu.se
Visiting address
Haraldsgatan 1
41314 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 500
40530 Göteborg

About Carl Martin Allwood

Biography

  • Professor of psychology at the University of Gothenburg 2008-
  • Professor of psychology at Lund University 1998-2008
  • Different employments at the University of Gothenburg 1982-1998
  • Docent in psychology 1987
  • Ph.D. in psychology 1982

Teaching

My teaching is mostly in cognitive psychology (often judgment and decision making), research methodology and theory of science. This teaching is mainly at the clinical psychologist program, Master’s level and at the postgraduate level.

Research interests

My main research interests are in cognitive psychology, social cognition and culture oriented psychology.

Current research

My research to a large extent concerns judgments (foremost various forms of metacognition) and decision making. Examples of my research on decision making are the social and cognitive skills associated with ability to make good decisions and the relation between cognitive style features such as decision making styles and perception of one’s own judgmental ability, organizational features and outcomes such as perceived stress in work life contexts.

One studied type of judgement is so-called confidence judgments of one’s own and others' answers to episodic and semantic memory tasks. Another studied type of judgments is answerability judgments, that is, assessments of if an (often complex) question is answered, may be answered in the near or distant future, or if it cannot be answered at all. A third type of studied judgement is knowledge/ignorance judgments (what I, or others, know and do not know and to what extent) and how those assessments relate to for ex risk perception.

Other parts of my research concern forensic psychology (foremost witness psychology), research psychology (including research on features of creative knowledge environments), the anthropology of knowledge (for example the nature and challenges of indigenous psychologies), theory of science (for example on the problematic and chaotic nature of the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research approaches).

I have also carried out research in the area of psychology of technology. These studies have usually taken a usability perspective on computer programs and consequences for the usability of computer programs of how system development processes are carried out in organizations but also included studies of virtual reality (VR) in the construction process.

Selected publications

Buratti, S., Allwood, C.M., Karlsson, B. (2017). Who knows? Knowledge activation, belief in certainty of knowledge, maximization tendencies and need for cognition in answerability judgments. The Journal of General Psychology, 144, 35-58.

Allwood, C.M., & Salo, I. (2012). Decision making styles and stress. International Journal of Stress Management, 119, 34-47.

Allwood, C.M. (2012). The distinction between qualitative and quantitative research methods is problematic. Quality & Quantity, 46, 1417 – 1429.

Allwood, C.M. (2011). On the foundation of the indigenous psychologies. Social Epistemology, 25(1), 3–14. doi: 10.1080/02691728.2010.534564

Allwood, C.M., & P. Johnsson (Eds.). (2009). Mänskliga möten över gränser. Vård och social omsorg i det mångkulturella samhället Human meetings over borders: Care and social provision in the poly-cultural society. Stockholm: Liber.