Professor Simon Kemp
Position
Professor
Qualifications
MSc (Auckland)
Ph.D. (Auckland)
Room
208a
Contact Details
Phone: +64 3 364 2968 (direct)
Internal Phone: 6968
Email: simon.kemp@canterbury.ac.nz
Postal address:
Department of Psychology
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch
New Zealand
Undergraduate Courses
PSYC346: Judgement and Decision Making (new course) - Course Coordinator
PSYC 344: Research Methods
Graduate Courses
PSYC 472: History of Psychology (new course) - Course Coordinator
PSYC 473: The Individual in the Economy (new course) - Course Coordinator
Thesis Supervision
I am happy to supervise on a range of topics, especially in economic psychology, memory and the history of psychology.
Currently, I am supervising student research on:
- The influence of values on depression.
- The psychology of pyramid schemes.
- Student debt.
- Evaluating an optometric intervention programme.
- Factors affecting jet lag
- Mass hysteria in the workplace
- The psychology of the black market.
- Why we don't talk about our incomes.
- Why people invest so much in real estate.
- Attitudes to foreign aid.
General supervision comments:
I have ideas that I think would make good projects and theses, but I am equally happy to supervise students who want to work from their own ideas.
In general, I expect to help with the research strategy and design, point out at least some previous work (depending a little on area), suggest and sometimes introduce appropriate analysis techniques (I have taught research methods and statistics), and read (and hopefully improve) drafts. I believe good thesis results should be published. I am not good at being very directive.
Current Research Interests
I have research interests in economic psychology, long-term memory, psychological measurement, and the history of psychology.
Research projects that are currently underway include:
- The psychology of international trade (with Jon Baron).
- How people can rank stimuli an ordinal scale and whether internal scales can be ordinal without also satisfying the requirements for an interval scale (with Randy Grace).
- The structure of themes, episodes and events in autobiographical memory (with Chris Burt).
- How the remembered enjoyment of an extended event is constructed from its components (with Chris Burt).
- How happiness categories work (with Friedel Bolle).
Department Administration
Member of Curriculum Committee
Recent Publications - 2002-2006
Fraser, H.P, Kemp, S. and Keenan, T. (in press). Behavioural studies of distributional justice in children. European Journal of Developmental Psychology.
Kemp, S. and Burt, C.D.B. (2006). Memories of uncertain origin: dreamt or real? Memory, 14, 87-93.
Kemp, S. and Grace, R.G. (2006). Operant contingencies and ‘near-money'. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 29, 188.
Sheen, M., Kemp, S. and Rubin, D.C. (2006). Disputes over memory ownership: What memories are disputed? Genes, Brain and Behavior, 5 (Supplement 1), S9-S13.
Kemp, S. (2005). Investigations of the consumer psychology of near-money. In K. Grunert and J. Thøgersen (Eds.), Consumers, Policy and the Environment: A tribute to Folke Ölander (pp. 251-264). Berlin: Springer.
Kemp, S. (2005). Simple optimisation. Behavioural Processes, 69 , 131-132.
Kemp, S. (2005). Editorial comment: Agreement between reviewers of Journal of Economic Psychology submissions. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26 , 779-784.
Mahoney, M.S., Kemp, S. and Webley, P. (2005). Factors in lay preferences for government or private supply of services. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26 , 73-87.
Baron, J. and Kemp, S. (2004). Support for trade restrictions, attitudes, and understanding of comparative advantage. Journal of Economic Psychology, 25, 565-580.
Burt, C.D.B., Kemp, S. and Conway, M. (2004). Memory for true and false autobiographical event descriptions. Memory, 12, 545-552.
Hunter, K. and Kemp, S. (2004). The personality of e-commerce investors. Journal of Economic Psychology, 25, 529-43.
Zellman, E. and Kemp, S. (2004). Estimating the other party's preferences and trust in trade union and employer negotiations: A comparison between New Zealand and Sweden. New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations, 29, 17-31.
Burt, C.D.B., Kemp, S. and Conway, M. (2003). Themes, events, and episodes in autobiographical memory. Memory and Cognition, 31, 317-325.
Kemp, S. (2003). The effect of providing misleading cost information on the perceived value of government services. Journal of Economic Psychology, 24, 117-128.
Kemp, S., Burt, C.D.B. and Sheen, M. (2003). Remembering dreamt and actual experiences. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 17, 577-591.
Kemp, S. (2002). Public goods and private wants: A psychological approach to Government spending. Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar.
Kemp, S., and Burt, C. D. B. (2002). Altlruism in valuing government and market supplied goods. Journal of Socio-Economics, 31, 167-169.