Behavioral Economics is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field at the intersection of psychology and economics. Combining powerful descriptive concepts from microeconomics with empirically grounded perspectives from behavioral and cognitive psychology, behavioral economics offers fresh new perspectives on thinking and decision making in a wide range of settings and species.
The Behavioral Economics Lecture Series features three prominent researchers from different branches of behavioral economics, illustrating cutting-edge research and theory in behavioral economics. Come see what behavioral economics is all about, and how it is changing some of the ways we think about the behavior of humans and other animals.
The series in co-sponsored by the Psychology and Economics Departments. All lectures are free and open to the public.
Spring 2014
Tuesday, January 28, Vollum Lecture Hall, 7.00 PM
Dan Ariely, Duke University
The Truth About Dishonesty: A behavioral economics perspective on cheating, lying, and feeling good about it
Despite our intentions, why do we so often fail to act in our own best interest? Why do we promise to skip the chocolate cake, only to find ourselves drooling our way into temptation when the dessert tray rolls around? Why do we overvalue things that we've created? Why do we fudge the truth in some cases but not others? What are the forces that influence our behavior? Dan Ariely, James B. Duke Professor of Psychology & Behavioral Economics at Duke University, is dedicated to answering these questions (and others) in order to help people live more sensible – if not rational – lives. Dan is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Predictably Irrational (2008), The Upside of Irrationality (2010), and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty (2012).
View video (Reed login required).
Thursday February 27, Vollum Lounge, 6.00 PM
Leonard Green, Washington University
Self-Control as Choice Behavior: The Behavioral Economics of Impulsivity
Len Green is currently Professor of Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. One of the pioneers in the field of behavioral economics, Len has published over 150 articles and book chapters, is co-author of the book Economic Choice Theory: An Experimental Analysis of Animal Behavior (Cambridge University Press), and editor of Advances in Behavioral Economics, the third volume of which is subtitled Substance Use and Abuse. His lecture will consider various approaches to the problem of self-control, emphasizing a behavioral economic view that treats self-control as a choice between short-term, smaller outcomes and delayed, larger outcomes. Special emphasis will be placed on the form of the discounting function and its implications for reversals of preference with the passage of time, as well as on commitment strategies to prevent unwanted reversals.
Wednesday March 26, Psychology Auditorium, 6.00 PM
Michael J. Beran, Language Research Center, Georgia State University
Behavioral Economics from the Chimpanzee's Perspective
Michael J. Beran is a Senior Research Scientist at Georgia State University and the Associate Director of the Language Research Center. He has published over 120 journal articles over 25 edited books, including the recent Foundations of Metacognition (Oxford University Press). One the foremost experts on primate cognition, he will be discussing recent work with chimpanzees on a range of judgment, reasoning, and decision making tasks designed to illuminate commonalities with human behavior. The results of these studies provide important insights into the evolutionary origins of human behavior and cognition, and illustrate the cross-species utility of behavioral economics.