PhD in Psychology: Investigating Unethical Decisions, Public Responses and Trust in Institutions

PhD in Psychology: Investigating Unethical Decisions, Public Responses and Trust in Institutions

Quick Decision

Strong but verify fit. This Cambridge Psychology PhD asks why people make unethical decisions, why the public may tolerate or reward them, and how these judgments connect to trust in public and private institutions. Its distinctive feature is a cross-cultural question paired with an unusually direct policy link: co-supervision includes Moira Nicolson at the UK Cabinet Office, and the studentship requires a three-month Innovation Fellowship placement. The core research preparation is specific: survey research, randomised controlled trials, longitudinal/cohort studies, and the ability to collect and analyse longitudinal large datasets. The principal constraint is funding: securing this topic does not guarantee a studentship, because awards are decided in a limited DTP-wide competition.

The topic closes 8 December 2026, which is the Cambridge Psychology funding deadline; the general PhD course page remains open longer, to 25 March 2027, but that later date does not preserve eligibility for this award. Before submitting, contact the proposed supervisor and secure support as the course procedure requires. International applicants should cost the award carefully: tuition support is capped at the UKRI Home-fee rate, the remaining overseas-fee difference needs another source, and the page estimates visa/health-surcharge costs of about £3,500 outside the award.

Research Problem and Doctoral Work

What is unsolved and why it matters

The project starts from the observation that major public failures can involve chains of poor or unethical decisions, while existing work has focused more on why individuals make such decisions than on why other people tolerate or reward them. The advertised study asks how decision drivers, public perceptions and trust in public and private institutions relate across cultures. The topic is assigned to the ESRC priorities “Security, risk and resilience” and “Understanding behaviour.”

The question is broader than one experimental paradigm. It can link individual decision-making, public moral judgment and institutional trust, with cross-cultural differences shaping what counts as unethical or tolerable. The official advert does not specify which countries, decision cases, institutions, social-media datasets or outcome measures will be studied. Nor does it commit the student to a particular design beyond requiring preparation in surveys, randomised controlled trials, longitudinal/cohort work and large longitudinal data collection and analysis. That open design space is a reason to contact supervisors early: applicants should understand whether they will develop one linked programme of studies or combine several methods and populations.

Work, methods and potential outputs

The topic page names two mandatory preparation areas: understanding survey research, RCTs and longitudinal/cohort studies; and being able to work with longitudinal large datasets such as social-media data, on both collection and analysis. Helpful but non-mandatory experience includes UK governmental accountability frameworks, politics outside the West (examples given include India, China and Russia), and multiple languages. Keep these distinctions clear in an application: the second group can strengthen a proposal, but it is not stated as a formal prerequisite.

The project's design could use surveys to map perceived wrongdoing and institutional trust, experiments to test whether decision context changes tolerance or reward, and longitudinal data to observe whether judgments shift over time. Those are plausible research directions suggested by the topic and required methods, not promised thesis studies. A strong proposal should show how a specific research question could be tested across cultures without assuming the same ethical categories, public institutions or political incentives are equivalent everywhere. It should also address measurement comparability, representativeness, consent/privacy and the limits of inferring motives from large observational data.

Recent work by the supervisors gives useful intellectual anchors. Roozenbeek and colleagues' 2025 study of social identity bias in language models demonstrates how a theory-based construct can be tested across many systems and conversational data, while acknowledging the limits of an English-centric, simplified measure. A 2025 paper on online manipulation markets takes a market perspective on digital manipulation and online trust/safety. Lee de Wit's 2025 work tests how perceived source independence can shape political belief polarization using computational modelling, a preregistered experiment and UK/US political data; the paper supports a plausible mechanism but does not claim it is the only explanation for polarization. Another 2025 survey study of public officials examines how assumptions about cooperation and behavioural malleability relate to policy preferences. These studies are relevant examples of construct operationalisation, survey/experimental design and policy-facing interpretation; they do not answer the proposed question about unethical decisions and public trust.

School, Programme and Field Context

The degree is the PhD in Psychology awarded by the University of Cambridge Department of Psychology. The Cabinet Office role is co-supervision/knowledge exchange; the advert does not indicate that it is a second degree-awarding institution or that the PhD is jointly registered. Cambridge's 2026 course page gives a usual full-time duration of three to four years and a part-time range of four to seven years. The studentship advert gives a funding span of 3.5–4.5 years full time and encourages part-time study at a minimum 50% of full-time. Ask how the award duration maps onto the selected registration mode and thesis submission deadline.

The course is research-based rather than a taught doctorate. Students are expected to take part in the Psychology Department's Postgraduate Education Programme and the Postgraduate School of Life Sciences Skills Training Programme, attend first-year postgraduate courses and seminars, and record optional statistics and methods training. The course page describes regular lab/supervisor meetings, termly formal progress feedback, a first-year probationary review, and a 60,000-word thesis submitted by the end of the fourth full-time year. This is useful structure for a methods-intensive project, though the project page does not specify the exact courses the student would take or how the Cabinet Office co-supervisor would participate in routine supervision.

Cambridge is highly ranked in the relevant broad subject: QS's 2026 Psychology ranking places it second globally, while Times Higher Education's 2026 Psychology table places it first. The Department reports that 93% of its combined Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience submission in REF 2021 was rated world-leading or internationally excellent. These are subject and department-level indicators, not evidence of a particular supervisor's availability or the quality of a specific thesis environment. The department lists both the Political Psychology Lab and Influence and Technology Lab among its research groups, creating a strong local fit for the project's social, experimental, computational and technology-related strands.

Supervisor and Lab Assessment

Dr Jon Roozenbeek directs the Influence and Technology Lab and studies belief formation, intergroup conflict, polarisation, digital manipulation and communication technology. The department identifies him as available to supervise doctoral students and says he is particularly interested in social data science and quantitative psychology. Dr Lee de Wit is an Associate Professor and directs the Cambridge Political Psychology Lab; his official profile describes experimental and computational social-science work on political psychology, polarisation and distrust in British politics, including a UK polarization tracker. Both list doctoral supervision availability.

The lab environment is methodologically relevant. The Influence and Technology Lab describes cross-cultural data collection and experiments using psychological theory and computational-social-science methods, while the Political Psychology Lab combines computational approaches, experiments and analysis of real-world political attitudes. Cambridge's Department of Psychology also lists a wider set of research groups; these provide a broader intellectual setting, not a guarantee that every group will contribute to this studentship.

Recent publications most relevant to the advertised work include:

• Hu et al. (2025), “Generative language models exhibit social identity biases.” The team tests social identity bias across 77 language models and human–AI conversations, illustrating large-scale measurement and cross-context analysis. The paper notes that its English-centric operationalisation limits cultural generalisation—a pertinent caution for a cross-cultural PhD.
• Dek et al. (2025), “Mapping the online manipulation economy.” This Science article frames digital manipulation through its market structure and links the topic to online trust and safety. It offers context for institutional and platform trust, but is not a study of unethical institutional decision-making.
• Young, Madsen and de Wit (2025), “Belief polarization can be caused by disagreements over source independence.” It combines a Bayesian model, preregistered experiment and UK/US data to test one route through which source judgments can polarize beliefs. The authors describe it as a plausible mechanism, not a complete account.
• Dewies, de Wit and Reisch (2025) report a preregistered survey study of 1,015 public officials and an information intervention, showing how assumptions about behaviour can relate to policy preferences. Its Netherlands sample and policy questions differ from this project's proposed cross-cultural public-trust work.
• Madsen et al. (2024) argue that behavioural science should assume people are reasonable and examine goals and system factors when interpreting behaviour. This is a useful caution against reducing unethical decisions to individual bias alone.

The sources show active research in adjacent fields and methods, plus a policy-facing collaboration network. They do not establish how the two supervisors divide this topic, the role of the Cabinet Office co-supervisor, access to social-media data, cross-country partners, sample budgets, or the expected number of studies.

Funding, Application and Living Cost

The topic page says that the CAM-DTP supervisor-led project is part of a competitive cohort-wide award process; the applicant selected for the topic is not guaranteed a studentship. The published studentship supports 3.5–4.5 years full-time, with part-time study encouraged at 50% FTE or higher. It provides tuition up to the national UKRI Home-fee rate, a tax-free full-time stipend of £21,805 in 2026/27, up to £900 for departmental research training, a tailored development programme, and a required three-month Innovation Fellowship placement. Students must submit within the award duration and start on 1 October.

For international students, the award covers tuition only up to the Home-fee rate; a separate scholarship or other source must cover the overseas-fee difference. The project page estimates visa and health-surcharge costs at about £3,500 before the award starts and says these are not covered. No project-specific source establishes that the difference is routinely topped up, so treat it as a material funding gap until a written offer confirms otherwise.

Cambridge estimates basic full-time living costs at £19,860 in 2026/27 (£1,655 per month), compared with the listed £21,805 annual stipend for that year. The nominal £1,945 gap is narrow before inflation, travel, visa/health costs, any overseas-fee shortfall, research expenses not covered by the department's £900 training allocation, or personal variation. Cambridge's estimate is based on earlier spending and inflation assumptions and excludes travel to and from the city. The stipend for the 2027/28 entry year is not yet given on the topic page.

Application: submit to the Department of Psychology for course BLPC22 and quote reference PJ51443. The specific topic page asks for a draft research proposal addressing fit, motivation, background, interests and familiarity with the research questions, plus CV, transcripts and details of two academic referees. The course portal additionally asks for structured fields such as project title, research summary, proposed supervisor and research experience, together with a short proposal. The course procedure says applications by 8 December 2026 are considered together, with possible December interviews and February 2027 decisions. It requires contacting the proposed supervisor and securing support before submitting; this support does not guarantee admission or funding. The general course admission deadline is 25 March 2027, but this does not extend the 8 December funding deadline.

Applicant Fit and Preparation

This topic is strongest for applicants who can give evidence of survey design/analysis, experimental or RCT work, longitudinal or cohort research, and handling large datasets from collection through analysis. The course's general admission requirements expect a good UK II.i equivalent and a degree in psychology, neuroscience or a related subject; examples include physiology, sociology, linguistics, computer science and engineering. These baseline course requirements are separate from the project-specific methods.

The advert does not require expertise in a specific national accountability framework, non-Western politics or multiple languages; it says those would be helpful. They can improve a proposal's cross-cultural framing, but should not be presented as mandatory experience. Applicants without direct public-trust or ethics research can show adjacent work on moral judgment, institutions, risk, public opinion or policy evaluation, and explain how they would transfer their methods.

A proposal should identify one manageable mechanism or comparison, not attempt to cover all cultures, institutional sectors and forms of unethical behaviour at once. Show how the design would distinguish private tolerance, perceived social norms and actual rewards; explain how longitudinal data would be sourced and ethically handled; and describe how cultural comparability would be assessed. Ask supervisors whether they expect the candidate to build a new data collection or analyse existing longitudinal data.

Next Actions and Questions to Verify

Before applying

• Contact Jon Roozenbeek and Lee de Wit with a short proposal, CV and writing sample, and ask which supervisor will lead day-to-day work and how Moira Nicolson contributes.
• Confirm that the 8 December 2026 deadline is the relevant DTP funding cut-off, while the 25 March 2027 course date applies only to general admission.
• Ask what countries, public/private institutions and decision cases are in scope, and whether a longitudinal dataset or data-collection budget already exists.
• Obtain written clarification on the 2027/28 stipend, exact award length, international fee differential, fees during part-time study and visa/IHS funding.
• Clarify the Innovation Fellowship placement: partner choice, timing, whether it can be with the Cabinet Office, and how it affects thesis milestones.

At interview

• Ask how surveys, experiments and longitudinal data are expected to fit together, what would count as cross-cultural measurement equivalence, and how social-media privacy/ethics will be handled.
• Ask how project-specific supervisor meetings, progress review and access to lab/research-group activities work.

Before accepting an offer

• Confirm the award and registration durations in writing, tuition covered by fee status, remaining overseas-fee source if relevant, stipend schedule, placement conditions and thesis submission deadline.

Evidence and Sources

Project and admissions

• Psychology of Unethical Decisions and Public Trust topic page
• PhD in Psychology course overview
• PhD in Psychology requirements
• PhD in Psychology application procedure

Department and training

• PhD study and training details
• Department of Psychology overview
• Psychology research centres and groups
• University of Cambridge address

Supervisors, laboratories and papers

• Jon Roozenbeek profile
• Lee de Wit profile
• Influence and Technology Lab
• Influence and Technology Lab research
• Political Psychology Lab research projects
• Influence and Technology Lab publications
• Hu et al. (2025), language-model social identity bias
• Dek et al. (2025), online manipulation economy
• Young et al. (2025), source independence and polarization
• Dewies et al. (2025), public officials' behavioural assumptions and policy preferences
• Madsen et al. (2024), behavioural science and reasonable action

Rankings, costs and careers

• QS Psychology ranking 2026
• Times Higher Education Psychology ranking 2026
• Cambridge living-cost estimate 2026/27
• Cambridge fee duration rules
• Home Office social research careers
• Government Analysis Function social researcher role