Judgment and Decision Making

COURSE OBJECTIVE 

Academic & Research Skills:
After completing this course you will be able to analyze and reflect on existing literature on judgment and decision making and apply this knowledge to examples and problems from business and public policy.

Bridging Theory & Practice - knowledge:
After completing this course you will be able to understand theories, methodology (experiments and field studies) and findings on heuristics and biases in the area of judgment and decision-making, from psychology and behavioral economics.

Bridging Theory & Practice - application:
After completing this course you will be able to make use of theoretical knowledge and concepts such as biases, decision processes, and risk perception to understand and analyze human decision-making in practical settings (business and policy decisions, but also settings).

COURSE CONTENT 

This course provides an overview of scientific research on judgment & decision making, where psychology and economics collide and collaborate to understand human behavior. It provides you with the basic knowledge of theories, concepts, and methods that are necessary to understand how decisions are made. The course is inspired by the groundbreaking, nobel-prize winning work of Tversky and Kahneman (Nobel prize 2002), Thaler (Nobel prize 2017) as well as other seminal work and research programs of other leading thinkers in the field (and society). One of the main topics of the course will be the question of how and when humans deviate from rational thinking. This is captured by a well-documented array of heuristics and biases, that help us to make reasonable and accurate decisions in some areas, but may crucially misguide us in others. We will discuss eye-opening research that documents several well-known biases as well as focus on mental accounting, loss/gain framing, forecasting, visceral influences, motivated reasoning, and (dis)honesty.

TEACHING METHODS 

Lectures and tutorials

TYPE OF ASSESSMENT

written exam – individual assessment
(Interim) assignment – group assessment