Experimental and Behavioural Economics
Experimental and Behavioural Economics
The Experimental and Behavioural Economics Research Group (EBERG) draws its membership from economists based at the Economics Department at Warwick who work in the fields of Experimental Economics, Behavioural Economics and/or Subjective Wellbeing (“Happiness Economics”). Experimental methods are used in many fields of economics, including behavioural economics, public economics, labour economics, political economy, game theory, and financial economics. Behavioural economics is an attempt to understand decision-making in the context of the many psychological, cognitive and emotional factors that influence behaviour. Behavioural economists typically build on traditional economic models with insights from psychology or neuroscience. Since behavioural economics concerns the underlying motivations for behaviour it can be hard (though not impossible) to find data to support or develop behavioural theories without the use of experimental methods which explains the close relationship between the two fields.
Experimental and behavioural research are fundamentally interdisciplinary and this is reflected in the fact that the group is linked to other similar groups across the University of Warwick and beyond. DR@W is the overarching interdisciplinary group of all behavioural scientists in Warwick which, together with EBERG, also takes members from the Behavioural Science Group at Warwick Business School and behavioural and experimental psychologists based in the Psychology Department, and hosts a weekly seminar, the DR@W Forum. Many members of EBERG are also affiliated with Bridges, an interdisciplinary centre that includes behavioural and experimental work in its remit that also hosts regular seminars and workshops. Behaviour, Brain and Society is one of the University of Warwick’s global research priorities (GRPs) and the co-ordinator of EBERG sits on the board of the GRP. Several group members are actively involved in the ESRC CAGE centre. Theme 3 of CAGE is led by the co-ordinator of EBERG and has a special focus on subjective wellbeing.
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Events
DR@W Forum: Erik Stuchly (Hamburg)
There is substantial evidence that humans engage their own decision-making mechanisms when predicting choices of others. According to one account, such predictions are implemented by the observer running a single simulation of the other person’s decision process in their mind and selecting the simulation outcome as the choice option. However, such an implementation would result in a large degree of stochasticity in predicted choices, thereby resulting in relatively low prediction accuracy.
In this talk, I will present an alternative idea - that observers could reduce uncertainty and increase prediction accuracy by simulating the decision between the same two options multiple times, sampling the outcomes of these simulations and then selecting the option corresponding to the most frequent outcome.
I will present results from a behavioural decision study employing the modified dictator game paradigm, aimed at testing whether we can identify behavioural indicators of sampling multiple simulation outcomes when participants predict other’s choices: specifically, whether participants show lower stochasticity and higher response times in predictions than self-decisions, after controlling for decision difficulty across these two conditions. I will complement these behavioural findings with analyses based on comparing the Drift-Diffusion model and a “sampling-of-decision-outcomes” model of choice. Together, these findings will shed light on potential differences between the mechanisms involved in making choices for ourselves and predicting the choices of others.