Faculty Profile
Dr. Paul Minda
Research Areas
Profile
John Paul Minda is a Professor of Psychology and the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Affairs at Western University. He is a core member of both the Western Center for Brain and Mind and the Western Institute for Neuroscience. In addition to his academic roles, Dr. Minda is an accomplished author and an award-winning lecturer. He earned his bachelor's degree from Hiram College, completed his PhD at the University at Buffalo, and was a Beckman Fellow at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois.Dr. Minda’s research focuses on how people organize their experiences into categories and concepts, and how these mental structures influence behavior, planning, and decision-making. His work on prototype theory and multiple-systems theories of categorization has advanced our understanding of how children, adults, animals, and machines learn to generalize.
He teaches a wide range of topics in cognitive psychology and has received several prestigious teaching awards, including:
•The Edward G. Pleva Award for Excellence in Teaching (2024), Western’s highest teaching honor
•The Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching (2020)
•The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Teaching Excellence Award (2023)
Dr. Minda is the author of the best-selling textbook The Psychology of Thinking, now in its second edition, and the popular non-fiction book How to Think.
He lives in London, Ontario with his family.
