Neuroeconomics Judgment And Decision Making

This volume explores how and why people make judgments and decisions that have economic consequences, and what the implications are for human well-being. It provides an integrated review of the latest research from many different disciplines, including social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; neuroscience and neurobiology; and economics and business. The book has six areas of focus: historical foundations; cognitive consistency and inconsistency; heuristics and biases; neuroeconomics and neurobiology; developmental and individual differences; and improving decisions. Throughout, the contributors draw out implications from traditional behavioral research as well as evidence from neuroscience. In recent years, neuroscientific methods have matured, beyond being simply correlational and descriptive, into theoretical prediction and explanation, and this has opened up many new areas of discovery about economic behavior that are reviewed in the book. In the final part, there are applications of the research to cognitive development, individual differences, and the improving of decisions. The book takes a broad perspective and is written in an accessible way so as to reach a wide audience of advanced students and researchers interested in behavioral economics and related areas. This includes neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, clinicians, psychologists (developmental, social, and cognitive), economists and other social scientists; legal scholars and criminologists; professionals in public health and medicine; educators; evidence-based practitioners; and policy-makers.

This volume explores how and why people make judgments and decisions that have economic consequences, and what the implications are for human well-being. It provides an integrated review of the latest research from many different disciplines, including social, cognitive, and developmental psychology; neuroscience and neurobiology; and economics and business. The book has six areas of focus: historical foundations; cognitive consistency and inconsistency; heuristics and biases; neuroeconomics and neurobiology; developmental and individual differences; and improving decisions. Throughout, the contributors draw out implications from traditional behavioral research as well as evidence from neuroscience. In recent years, neuroscientific methods have matured, beyond being simply correlational and descriptive, into theoretical prediction and explanation, and this has opened up many new areas of discovery about economic behavior that are reviewed in the book. In the final part, there are applications of the research to cognitive development, individual differences, and the improving of decisions. The book takes a broad perspective and is written in an accessible way so as to reach a wide audience of advanced students and researchers interested in behavioral economics and related areas. This includes neuroscientists, neuropsychologists, clinicians, psychologists (developmental, social, and cognitive), economists and other social scientists; legal scholars and criminologists; professionals in public health and medicine; educators; evidence-based practitioners; and policy-makers.

In the years since it first published, Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain has become the standard reference and textbook in the burgeoning field of neuroeconomics. The second edition, a nearly complete revision of this landmark book, will set a new standard. This new edition features five sections designed to serve as both classroom-friendly introductions to each of the major subareas in neuroeconomics, and as advanced synopses of all that has been accomplished in the last two decades in this rapidly expanding academic discipline. The first of these sections provides useful introductions to the disciplines of microeconomics, the psychology of judgment and decision, computational neuroscience, and anthropology for scholars and students seeking interdisciplinary breadth. The second section provides an overview of how human and animal preferences are represented in the mammalian nervous systems. Chapters on risk, time preferences, social preferences, emotion, pharmacology, and common neural currencies—each written by leading experts—lay out the foundations of neuroeconomic thought. The third section contains both overview and in-depth chapters on the fundamentals of reinforcement learning, value learning, and value representation. The fourth section, “The Neural Mechanisms for Choice, integrates what is known about the decision-making architecture into state-of-the-art models of how we make choices. The final section embeds these mechanisms in a larger social context, showing how these mechanisms function during social decision-making in both humans and animals. The book provides a historically rich exposition in each of its chapters and emphasizes both the accomplishments and the controversies in the field. A clear explanatory style and a single expository voice characterize all chapters, making core issues in economics, psychology, and neuroscience accessible to scholars from all disciplines. The volume is essential reading for anyone interested in neuroeconomics in particular or decision making in general. Editors and contributing authors are among the acknowledged experts and founders in the field, making this the authoritative reference for neuroeconomics Suitable as an advanced undergraduate or graduate textbook as well as a thorough reference for active researchers Introductory chapters on economics, psychology, neuroscience, and anthropology provide students and scholars from any discipline with the keys to understanding this interdisciplinary field Detailed chapters on subjects that include reinforcement learning, risk, inter-temporal choice, drift-diffusion models, game theory, and prospect theory make this an invaluable reference Published in association with the Society for Neuroeconomics—www.neuroeconomics.org Full-color presentation throughout with numerous carefully selected illustrations to highlight key concepts

This book represents one of the cornerstones of the series Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics. It is divided into eight sections, starting with an introduction to neuroeconomics followed by an overview of frequently applied experimental paradigms (games) in neuroeconomics research. Furthermore, it addresses the molecular basis of human decision making, environmental/situational factors and social contexts influencing human decision making, as well as translational and developmental/clinical approaches to neuroeconomics. In closing, a paper on neuro-marketing demonstrates how knowledge from neuroeconomics research can be applied in “real life.” Culminating in an extensive methods section, in which eight different neuroscience techniques are introduced, the book offers an essential resource for researchers and practitioners, and may also be beneficial for graduate students.

This chapter reviews models of choice on two levels: The first concerns the descriptions of choice and their evolution from normative models of how choices should be make to more behaviorally realistic models, more consistent with data showing that choice depends heavily on context. We present brief overviews of risky and riskless choice models and data and for choice over time. We then turn to computational process models, a more recent class of models that make prediction for multiple properties of the decision process beyond simply what is chosen, including predicting the distribution of errors and decision times.These models are typically applied to simpler choices, but have found great use in contemporary neuroscience.

Children face an overwhelming amount of information and a range of different choices every day, and so there has never been a more important time to understand how children learn to make judgments and decisions in our modern world. Individual Differences in Judgment and Decision-Making presents cutting-edge developmental research to advance our knowledge and understanding of how these competencies emerge. Focusing on the role of individual differences, the text provides a complementary theoretical approach to understanding the development of judgment and decision-making skills, and how and why these competencies vary within and between different periods of development. Sampling a diverse set of developmental paradigms and measures, as well as considering typical and atypically developing samples, this volume provokes thinking about how we can support our children and youth to help them make better choices. Drawing on the expertise of a range of international contributors, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of thinking and reasoning from both cognitive and developmental psychology backgrounds.

How do we make the judgments that inform our lives? Is there any way of consciously removing bias from the choices we make? What do our everyday personal decisions have in common with those made by groups, companies, and even nations? In this engaging and innovative textbook, Nancy Kim presents a multidisciplinary introduction to the dynamic field of judgment and decision-making. This lucidly written text delivers insights from cognitive psychology, aptly combining with interdependent findings from fields as diverse as neuropsychology, behavioural economics, social, developmental and clinical psychology, and philosophy. Offering not only a comprehensive explanation of the neurological structures and cognitive processes that underlie how we make decisions and form judgments in our everyday lives, readers can expect to learn the implications of these decisions upon an individual's prospects for health and longevity. Understanding behaviour is a central aspect of inquiry in the psychology discipline and as such this book is an essential companion for students taking undergraduate psychology, cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience courses; particularly those which include a module in judgment and decision-making. This text may also be helpful for undergraduate and postgraduate business courses on the subject.

Neuroeconomics has emerged as a field of study with the goal of understanding the human decision-making process and the mental consideration of multiple outcomes based on a selected action. In particular, neuroeconomics emphasizes how economic conditions can impact and influence the decision-making process and alternately, how human actions have the power to impact economic conditions. Neuroeconomics and the Decision-Making Process presents the latest research on the relationship between neuroscience, economics, and human decision-making, including theoretical foundations, real-world applications, and models for implementation. Taking a cross-disciplinary approach to neuroeconomic theory and study, this publication is an essential reference source for economists, psychologists, business professionals, and graduate-level students across disciplines.