Price is a career psychologist, not a management scholar. He earned a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology at the University of Michigan (1994, after a magna cum laude B.A. from Washington University) [1], then joined California State University, Fresno in 1996 [2]: his only academic home since, now as full professor [3]. His research sits inside judgment and decision making (JDM) [4]: cue-interaction and probability-judgment studies in the early-to-mid 1990s [1], then forecasting accuracy and risk perception, then the 2004 paper with Eric Stone that Management Craft cites, finding that people prefer a more confident advisor over an equally accurate but more measured one [5]. It’s his most-cited work (425 citations on Google Scholar) [5]. He also wrote the original edition of the open-access textbook Research Methods in Psychology, since adapted into Canadian, U.S., and New Zealand editions used across undergraduate psychology [6].
Fresno State has named him its psychology department’s Professor of the Year four times since 2005 [2] and gave him its 2018 Provost’s Award for Excellence in Teaching [2]: evidence the confidence-heuristic finding comes from a department’s strongest teacher-researcher, not a marginal figure. None of it touches management directly: no MBA program, no operating role, no management-journal publication.
Price sits firmly on the adjacent end of the devoted-adjacent spectrum: a JDM psychologist whose finding was borrowed into management, not a management scholar building management theory. His word carries real weight on one narrow fact that the rest of the citation depends on: that confidence, not accuracy, drives who people trust to advise them [5], the empirical basis for treating certainty itself as a warning sign when weighing a Calibration Call advisor, a candidate, or a peer’s stated conviction. It carries no weight on management practice more broadly; organizational design, leadership, and strategy sit entirely outside his research record.