Our first event of the year will be an “in-house” speaker talk. Dr. Ido Erev – a world-renowned decision-making researcher who has just joined the faculty in the Department of Psychology – will be presenting some of his work on Friday, Sept 12, from 3-4pm in Psychology Building 10. This will be followed by a beginning-of-the-year welcome reception for all DSC members. Please come and join us to meet-and-greet your fellow DSC members!
Dr. Erev’s research reveals the conditions under which wise incentive systems can solve behavioral and social problems. Among the contributions of this research is the discovery of a robust description-experience-gap: People exhibit oversensitivity to rare events when they decide based on a description of the incentive structure, but experience reverses this bias and leads to underweighting of rare events. His work suggests that people tend to select options that lead to the best outcomes in a small sample of similar past experiences. This suggests that incentives are most effective when they ensure that the socially desirable behavior maximizes payoff, and minimizes the probability of regret.