If the history of economic thought is a succession of new mainstreams, the current predominant school of thought is undoubtedly Behavioral Economics. Models introducing cognitive limitations of agents are now increasingly spreading and, even in those economic domains where there is more reluctance towards this approach, behavioral considerations are still part of the debate. If the […]
Music is a fundamental part of our every-day life. We either listen to it actively while walking, studying, relaxing, attending concerts and operas, or passively, being exposed to background music in bars, restaurants, waiting rooms and many other places. There exists a large amount of literature investigating music and its effects on our emotions and […]
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him…” Fëdor Dostoevskij, The Brothers Karamazov We are constantly exposed to examples of dishonest behavior. We read about it in the news or […]
In 1951 Eric Dodds, an Irish philologist and anthropologist, published “The Greeks and the Irrational”, a famous book in which he presented two antithetical concepts applied to the study of the Ancient Greece: the “shame culture” and the “guilt culture”. Dodds focused his inquiry on the earliest stages of the Greek culture, analyzing the Homeric world, […]
For the second interview of the initiative “Meet the Experts” we talked with Paulius Yamin, a behavioural scientist with a background in cultural and anthropological studies who researches the possibility of achieving behavioural change by intervening on social norms. He is currently the Managing Director of the Center for Social Norms and Behavioural Dynamics at the […]
Since Daniel Goleman published his best-selling book “Emotional intelligence” in 1995 and brought this concept to the attention of the public, it has been widely appreciated but also debated and criticized. Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to identify, express and manage one’s own as well as others’ emotions. Its four main components are self-awareness, […]
Evidence from the fields of behavioral economics and neuroeconomics shows that many cognitive biases influence people’s minds when they have to make choices. These unconscious but universally spread processes shape our brains and make us “Predictably Irrational” (as behavioral scientist Dan Ariely wrote). For this reason, “nudging” can act on our decision-making system and be positively […]
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