Dr Kevin Allan

Biography

I'm an experimental psychologist, and my research is now focussed on the psychology of human-AI interaction. We are trying to build and control Agents that perform specific tasks in stable ways underpinned by a 'Psychology'.

In the past my research has primarily addressed two questions. How does the brain manage to rapidly construct and update a reasonably good model of the world within our conscious experience? And, how does our model of the world avoid distortion or false beliefs when exposed to social influences from other people or from persuasive new technologies, like AI?

My background and training is in the cognitive neuroscience of long-term memory, stemming from my St Andrews University PhD work, using EEG to identify neural correlates of conscious and unconscious retrieval processes. I continued along similar lines, using PET and fMRI, in London as a research fellow at the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, before moving to Aberdeen at the turn of the century. Here, I've continued to work on the neural basis of retrieval processing, but over the years I've grown increasingly interested in how our model of the world adapts to social influences that carry useful information or misinformation. In 2015, I began to work almost exclusively on cognitive and EEG-based diagnostics for Alzheimer's disease, leading to the formation of a spin-out company. In 2019, I returned to the School of Psychology full-time, where I've continued to research social influences upon cognition, in particular how the influence of AI may be psychologically regulated.

Internal Memberships

I am the School of Psychology's Lead for Online Course provision. I coordinate 4th year option courses (PS4040, Current Topics in Psychology, and PS4041 Critical Review) and one of our core MSc Conversion courses (PS5527).

Research Overview

Human-AI interaction - how do we engineer AI to be appropriately persuasive?

Adapting to social influences - how do we avoid incorporating other people's false beliefs or distorted views of the world into our own - obviously perfect - cognitive model of the world?

Current Research

We are developing experimental protocols that allow us to control AI agent behaviour in stable ways to perform specific tasks. This allows us to then study how such AI interact with and, for example, persuade, humans to take their advice (or not).

We have specific projects running on experimental capture of phenomena from human-AI interaction that many people want to get control over - specifically, the propagation of bias (e.g. gender-bias) from AI into human decision-making, and how signals of accuracy, likelihood or confidence provided by AI influence trust in what they recommend.

We also have a new project just underway with Skills Development Scotland (SDS), the national Career's Guidance provider, to examine how to translate that experimental work into good practice and policy-supportive deployment of AI into Career's advice contexts.

Knowledge Exchange

We are now working with Skills Development Scotland on how to introduce AI into Career's guidance settings without undermining public policy.

Collaborations

We have ongoing collaborations with Dr Gowri Sripada and Dr Georgios Leontidis from the School of Natural and Computing Sciences.

Funding and Grants

Currently, the lab has funding from the ESRC supporting two PhD studentships (one began in Autumn 2022, and the other begins in Autumn 2025). Both are investigating human-AI interaction. One focusses on experimental work controlling stereotypical bias in generative AI and examining how it propagates into human decision-making, and the other is looking at how to translate that work effectively to support public policy in areas where generative AI are being introduced - like Career's guidance.

Over the last 20 years, I've received more than £1m in funding from various sources (including TauRx pharmaceuticals, ESRC, BBSRC, Bial Foundation, Carnegie Trust, SINAPSE) to investigate cognitive and EEG based diagnostics in Alzheimer's disease, the cognitive and neural basis of episodic memory, neurophysiological markers of suceptibility to memory distortion, and other topics.

Teaching Responsibilities

I currently teach - and coordinate - two 4th year option courses (PS4040/PS5040 Current Topics in Psychology, PS4041 Critical Review), as well as the 4th year Cognitive Neuroscience option course (PS4510/PS3524). I supervise 4th year honours projects, and I also teach on 3rd year methods courses.

Non-course Teaching Responsibilities

I lead the School of Psychology's provision of Online Courses, I sit on the School's Education committee, and I am a personal tutor.