Nick Chater

Nick Chater FBA
Born	(1965-05-19) 19 May 1965 (age 60)
Education	Trinity College, Cambridge University of Edinburgh
Occupations	Behavioural scientist cognitive scientist university professor writer academic
Years active	1998–present
Known for	Simplicity theory

Nick Chater FBA (born 8 May 1965) ^[1] is an English professor of behavioural sciences at the Warwick Business School in London. He heads the organisation's behavioural science group, the largest of its kind in Europe. ^[2] Chater's work focuses on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches. ^[3]

Career

Chater obtained a Master of Arts degree in experimental psychology at Trinity College, Cambridge in 1986, before attaining his doctorate in cognitive science and psychology from the University of Edinburgh in 1989. ^{[1] [4] [5]}

Chater presents the massive open online course The Mind Is Flat, ^[6] based on his eponymous 2018 publication, in which he describes the human mind as a "story-generating machine". ^[7] He was scientist-in-residence on eight seasons of the BBC Radio 4 series The Human Zoo . ^[8] Chater is also an advisor to the UK government's Behavioural Insights Team ^[2] and a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and the British Academy. ^[3]

Books

Year	Title	Publisher	Identifier	Pages	Notes
1998	Rational Models of Cognition	Oxford University Press	ISBN 9780198524151	543	co-authored with Mike Oaksford
	Rationality in an Uncertain World: Essays on the Cognitive Science of Human Reasoning	Psychology Press	ISBN 9780863775345	348
2007	Bayesian Rationality: The Probabilistic Approach to Human Reasoning	Oxford University Press	ISBN 9780198524496	340
2010	Cognition and Conditionals: Probability and Logic in Human Thinking		ISBN 9780199233298	420
2015	Empiricism and Language Learnability		ISBN 9780198734260	257	co-authored with Alexander Simon Clark, John A. Goldsmith, and Amy Perfors
2016	Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing	MIT Press	ISBN 9780262334778	330	co-authored with Morten H. Christiansen
2018	The Mind Is Flat: The Illusion of Mental Depth and the Improvised Mind	Penguin Books	ISBN   9780241208779	272
2023	The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World		ISBN   9781804991008	368	co-authored with Morten H. Christiansen

Awards

• British Psychological Society's Spearman Medal (1995), jointly awarded with Mike Oaksford. ^[1]
• David E. Rumelhart Prize (2023). ^[3]

References

1. Chater, Nick (8 May 2006). "Curriculum Vitae: Nick Chater" (PDF). Dectech. Retrieved 18 November 2025.
2. Hodges, Lucy (5 December 2013). "MBA programmes: A more thoughtful approach". Daily Telegraph . Retrieved 17 May 2017.
3. "Professor Nick Chater". Warwick Business School . Retrieved 21 March 2017.
4. "Rational Analysis and Language Processing". Science Direct . Retrieved 18 November 2025.
5. "Freedom of Information Request" (PDF). Climate Change Committee . Retrieved 18 November 2025.
6. "The Mind is Flat: The Shocking Shallowness of Human Psychology". futurelearn.com. Retrieved 12 August 2023.
7. Hodgkinson, Thomas W. (31 March 2018). "I'm in Danger of Becoming a Flat-Mind Bore". The Spectator Australia . Retrieved 18 November 2018.
8. "The Human Zoo". BBC . Retrieved 12 August 2023.