Steven A. Sloman

Steven Sloman was born in Montreal and grew up in Toronto. He is a cognitive scientist who has been at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, since 1992. He studies human thinking including causal reasoning, collective cognition, and decision making. His books include Causal Models: How People Think About the World and Its Alternatives (2005), The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone (2017) and The Cost of Conviction: How Our Deepest Values Lead Us Astray (2025). He has served in multiple editorial capacities in his field and he was the INSEAD-Sorbonne Université Distinguished Visiting Chair in Behavioural Sciences, 2020. He is a Fellow of several associations in psychology and cognitive science (e.g., the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the Cognitive Science Society). He has received both federal and private foundation funding. At Brown, he was chair of the Faculty Executive Committee in 2023-2024. He developed a concentration at Brown called Behavioral Decision Sciences that began in 2018. In his spare time, he plays music and squash and likes to go mountain biking. He is married to Linda Covington and has two kids who he doesn’t see enough, Sabina and Leila.