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on Neuroeconomics |
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Issue of 2009‒11‒21
three papers chosen by |
| By: | Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde (IJN - Institut Jean-Nicod - CNRS : UMR8129 - Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris - ENS Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)) |
| Abstract: | Regrat helps to optimize decision-behaviour. It can be defined as a rational emotion. Several recent neurobiological studies have confirmed the interface between emotion and cognition at which regret is located and documented its role in decision behaviour. The data give credibility to the incorporation of regret in decision-theory that had been proposed by economists in the 1980s. However, finer distinctions are required in order to get a better grasp of how regret and behaviour influence each other. Regret can be defined as a predictive error signal but this signal does not necessarily transpose into a decision-weight influencing behaviour. Clinical studies on several types of patients show that the processing of an error-signal and its influence on subsequent behaviour can be dissociated. We propose a general understanding of how regret and decision-making are connected in terms of regret being modulated by rational antecedents of choice. Regret and the modification of behaviour on its basis will depend on the criteria of rationality involved in decision-making. We indicate current and prospective lines of research in order to refine our views on how regret contributes to optimal decision-making. |
| Keywords: | regret, predictive error-signal, decision-weight, addiction, paradoxes of rationality |
| Date: | 2009 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:ijn_00432308_v1&r=neu |
| By: | David Galenson |
| Abstract: | Irving Berlin and Cole Porter were two of the great experimental songwriters of the Golden Era. They aimed to create songs that were clear and universal. Their ability to do this improved throughout much of their careers, as their skill in using language to create simple and poignant images improved with experience, and their greatest achievements came in their 40s and 50s. During the 1960s, Bob Dylan and the team of John Lennon and Paul McCartney created a conceptual revolution in popular music. Their goal was to express their own ideas and emotions in novel ways. Their creativity declined with age, as increasing experience produced habits of thought that destroyed their ability to formulate radical new departures from existing practices, so their most innovative contributions appeared early in their careers. |
| JEL: | N00 |
| Date: | 2009–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:15511&r=neu |
| By: | Quy-Toan Do (The World Bank); Lakshmi Iyer (Harvard Business School, (UNIT NAME) Unit) |
| Abstract: | We survey the recent literature on the mental health effects of conflict. We highlight the methodological challenges faced in this literature, which include the lack of validated mental health scales in a survey context, the difficulties in measuring individual exposure to conflict, and the issues related to making causal inferences from observed correlations. We illustrate how some of these issues can be overcome in a study of mental health in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mental health is measured using a clinically validated scale; conflict exposure is proxied by administrative data on war casualties instead of being self-reported. We find that there are no significant differences in overall mental health across areas which are affected by ethnic conflict to a greater or lesser degree. |
| Date: | 2009–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hbs:wpaper:10-040&r=neu |