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The primary objective of this course is to introduce students to fundamental research in the field of Behavioural Decision Making, research that spans a variety of disciplines including psychology, economics, and neuroscience. At the conclusion of the course, students should be conversant with the key theoretical principles in decision-making research, and in particular should be able to distinguish between descriptive and prescriptive accounts of decision-making. Additionally, students will be able to understand and discuss current influential research papers that examine both the behavioural and neural bases of human decision making, as well as understand the main research methods used in this field. Finally, the student should be able to propose a research idea that advances decision-making research in an innovative direction.
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The Behavioural Decision Making course covers the most important recent developments in decision-making research. As befits the field in general, we will examine research from a variety of disciplines. Though most of the research comes from psychological studies, we will also cover research from economics, neuroscience, and public policy. In each lecture we will cover one broad theme:
1. Course Introduction & Risky decision-making
2. Intertemporal choice
3. Developmental decision-making
4. Affect in decision-making
5. Heuristics
6. Social decision-making 1 – how we choose in interactive settings
7. Social decision-making 2 – brain processes underlying choice
8. Decisions in the Wild – case studies in (bad) decision-making
Exam information
Grades will be assigned based on performance on an end of course exam (50%) and a research proposal (50%)
1.Exam: 6-8 open questions based on the assigned readings and on the lectures.
2. Research Proposal: a 4-6 page document with a proposed novel experiment, based on one or two of the themes of the lectures. Students should present a well-described hypothesis, the thoughts/models/theory this hypothesis is based on, and an experimental design in considerable detail.
Students will have the opportunity to receive peer feedback of their proposal before submission.
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