On September 14, the Behavioural Science Centre held a reunion to mark a decade of our MSc Behavioural Science. We were delighted to have talks on the day from a range of individuals who have been involved with the program over the years. Founder director of the MSc program, Dr. Michael Daly, kicked off the
From David Hardisty: If you haven’t heard, Francesca Gino is suing the Data Colada researchers (Joe, Uri, and Leif) and Harvard for $25 million USD: https://www.science.org/content/article/honesty-researcher-facing-fraud-concerns-sues-harvard-and-accusers-25-million The lawsuit claims defamation related to Data Colada’s work detailing evidence of fraud across four papers: http://datacolada.org/109 Personally, I think Data Colada does an incredible service to our field and to
One argument against incentives is that the mere fact of offering a payment might be inferred to signal that the vaccine is unsafe. Two state-of-the-art studies estimate the effect of financial incentives on trust in the vaccines and find none. A limitation of these studies is that trust in the vaccine was already established at
A Harvard professor who researches dishonesty is now on administrative leave following allegations of data fraud. Monetary / career incentives seem to do little to predict faking data. Francesca Gino is another researcher of morality who has had papers retracted because their data was simply made up. The techniques that behavioural scientists used to uncover
Ellsberg is a pioneer of behavioural science and more especially behavioural economics, being one of the first to use experiments to demonstrate deviations from expected utility theory. His legacy in the wider-world stems from his decision to blow the whistle on unofficial US policy in the run up to and during the Vietnam war. Ellsberg
Drishti Khatri, MSc Behavioural Science Embarking on my MSc in Behavioural Science for Management at the esteemed Behavioural Science Centre, University of Stirling, has been an enlightening experience. Little did I know that this academic journey would present me with an extraordinary opportunity to delve into the profound impact of social media algorithms on human
Adam Smith predicts that income/pop of $20k will bring greater happiness than income/pop of $25k if the former is growing and the latter is stagnant – see a screenshot of his massively influential 1776 work Wealth of Nations below. Smith’s hypothesis has not (to my knowledge) been empirically tested but it is very much in
Something happened to humans over the past couple of hundred years. From having been largely stagnant for thousands of years, population, life expectancy and material comfort all took a dramatic and sustained uptick starting around 1700. That’s amazing and, what’s also amazing is… nobody quite knows why this explosion in human progress happened when it
An addictive good is one whose consumption eventually and reliably reduces the marginal utility of all other goods*. It is because of its effects on the perceived utility of all other goods that an addicitive good is distinct from one that is moreish. A good is moreish if it takes willpower to resist consuming more
A transitory upshift in expected utility e.g. seeing the trophy awakened in him an enthusiasm for the contest. Enthusiasm is often contagious.