I study thinking and reasoning including such processes as problem solving and decision making. I mostly use behavioural experiments to uncover the cognitive, affective, and social mechanisms underlying problem solving and decision making. Currently, the primary question that I am interested in is “What makes people change their beliefs?” Change of beliefs plays an important role in different facets of human life. A shift in beliefs regarding problems and potential solutions could assist us in addressing this question (sometimes resulting in a "Eureka!" moment). Changes in beliefs are also closely associated with the learning process. However, at the same time, changes in beliefs can lead to radicalization of opinions, the acceptance of dangerous ideas, and other consequences that harm our societies. My unchanging belief is that the whole range of these phenomena can be studied with experimental psychology.

Ammalainen, A., & Moroshkina, N. (2023, April 17). A sudden increase in perceptual fluency enhances the
probability of an Aha!-like comprehension in remote associate test problems.
doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/aqj5y (Preprint)

Ammalainen, A. & Moroshkina, N. (2022) Where does Eureka come from? The effect of unreportable
semantic hints in the phenomenology of insight. Journal of Intelligence, 10(4), 110.
https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence10040110.

Moroshkina, N., Savina, A., Ammalainen, A., Gershkovich, V., Zverev, I., Lvova, O. (2022) How difficult was
it? Metacognitive judgements about problems and their solutions after Aha! moment. Frontiers in
psychology. 13:911904. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.911904.

Ammalainen, A. & Moroshkina, N. (2020) The effect of true and false unreportable hints on anagram
problem solving, restructuring, and the Aha!-experience. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 33, 6–7,
644–658. https://doi.org/10.1080/20445911.2020.1844722

Ammalainen, A.V. & Moroshkina, N.V. (2019) When an error leads to confidence: false insight and feeling
of knowing in anagram solving. Psychology. Journal of the Higher School of Economics. 16 (4), 774–783.
DOI: 10.17323/1813-8918-2019-4-774-783

Moroshkina, N.V. & Ammalainen, A.V. (2021) From insight to Aha! experience: a new paradigm in the
research of insight problem solving. Sibirskiy Psihologicheskiy Zhurnal [Siberian psychological journal], 79,
48-73. DOI: 10.17223/17267080/79/4 (in Russian)

Moroshkina, N.V., Ammalainen, A.V., Savina, A.I. (2020) Catching up with insight: modern approaches and
methods of measuring insight in cognitive psychology. Psihologicheskie issledovaniya [Psychological
studies], 74(13). (in Russian)

Tikhonov, R. V., Ammalainen, A. V., & Moroshkina, N. V. (2018). The variety of metacognitive feelings:
Different phenomena or different terms? Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Psychology and Education,
8(3), 214–242. doi.org/10.21638/11701/spbu16.2018.302 (in Russian).

Spiridonov, V.F., Loginov N.I., Ammalainen A.V., Vyazovkina V.K., Ardislamov V.V., Anufriev G.V. (2021)
Mental models in action: The difference of consistent responses is less than inconsistent. Cognitive
science in Moscow: New research, 406-410 (Moscow, 2021) (peer-reviewed conference paper in Russian).

Loginov, N.I., Spiridonov, V.F., Kurbanov K.A., Ardislamov V.V., Ammalainen, A.V., Vyazovkina, V.K. (2021)
The long-term individual differences in preferences of mental VS embodied problem solving. Cognitive
science in Moscow: New research, 255-260 (Moscow, 2021) (peer-reviewed conference paper in Russian).

Ammalainen, A.V., Moroshkina, N.V. The effect of unreportable hints on cognitive and affective
components of insight in anagrams solving (2021). Cognitive psychology: Lower- and higher-level
processing, 7-11 (Yaroslavl, 2021) (peer-reviewed conference paper in Russian).