On January 3rd, 2008 in Iowa, Obama took a huge step towards being elected as the 44th president of the USA. It was the night of the first Democratic primary and Obama was sitting at the victory throne with 38% of the Democratic vote, leaving John Edwards in the second line with 30% and Hillary […]
Artificial Intelligence has long held the promise of improving predictions in healthcare solutions, a promise which is now becoming a reality in many settings, first and foremost the US, where in the past years many commercial algorithms have received FDA regulatory approval for broad clinical use. Indeed, the application of Machine Learning, a type of AI which allows software […]
The growing impact of climate change in today’s society is favoring the spread in awareness on the effects of excessive energy consumption, making energy conservation a pressing topic in the public debate. Exploiting behavioral science, Behavioral Energy Efficiency programs help consumers make more informed and conscious choices on energy optimization issues, motivating them to generate […]
Defaults are simple, affordable, and cost-efficient solutions which can be introduced in order to elicit the desired behaviour by individuals. They are one of the most intuitive mechanisms implemented in choice architecture, and their use can be applied to a range of different choice-making settings, as they simply leverage on the assumption that individuals are disproportionately more likely to stick to the option presented to them rather than actively switching to an alternative. The […]
In recent years, a growing body of research has been investigating the role of morality in the formation of political attitudes and the association between individuals’ moral beliefs and political ideology. In particular, Jonathan Haidt’s thesis allowed us to discover the importance of moral intuitions in building our political identity: by constructing his Moral Foundations Theory, Haidt detected the six underlying moral principles that shape our politics. Intuitions come first Using […]
Leaders too often assume that their managerial strategies can be based on a rational analysis of data, trends and opportunities. Nonetheless, cognitive biases and agency problems have the power of shaping leaders’ decisions and employees’ actions alike. If an organizational strategy aspires to be truly rational, it should therefore account for the irrationality of individuals’ and groups’ behaviours, as dynamics playing out in the background are often the biggest driver of what gets decided […]
The racial gap in law enforcement has critical negative effects in terms of internal department dynamics and of interaction with policed communities. Closing this racial gap would ensure that the demographic of the police forces matches the demographic of the neighbourhoods they serve, consequently increasing their representativeness and improving their legitimacy. This lack of diversity is particularly critical in the United States, where Federal data collected from 467 local police departments showed that, between 2007 and 2016, more than two thirds of these departments became whiter with respect to […]
While most countries have begun the process of vaccinating against coronavirus, the data about who is getting vaccinated- or more importantly, who isn’t – are troubling. First, those least vulnerable to COVID-19 are being vaccinated before the highly at-risk individuals who don’t make or don’t attend their vaccination appointments. Second, vaccination rates are substantially lower amongst ethnic […]
How is voting behaviour influenced by cognitive biases? In which ways does social interaction affect the beliefs of individuals? And what are the psychological determinants of support for either a liberal or conservative ideology? The event held on April 7, 2021 answered these and more questions, offering us some insight on the behavioural and psychological underpinnings of political preferences of voters. With Bocconi Professor Catherine De Vries as our moderator, we invited as our speakers Dan Braha, Full Professor at University of Massachusetts, and Yoel Inbar, Associate […]
Some conspiracies are, to a certain extent, fun. Take, for instance, the absurd claims that Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, is an illegitimate son of Fidel Castro. The story went viral in 2018. It was quite inconsequential, and it seems fair to say that most of the people sharing it didn’t take it too seriously. […]
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