The goal of this paper is to draw some lessons for economic theory from research in psychology, social psychology and, more briefly, in biology, which purports to explain the formation of social preferences. We elicit the basic mechanisms whereby a variety of social preferences are determined in...

Intuitive decision making has a large and often negative impact in economic decisions, but its measurement and quantification remains challenging. Following research from psychology, behavioral economists have often attempted to causally manipulate the balance of intuition and deliberation by...

This paper contrasts the modern use of the assumption that rationality guides individual economic behaviour, as reflected in simple models of utility and profit maximization, to literature between 1890 and 1930 which sharply challenged the use of such an assumption, as well as to later...

We synthesize and discuss the available knowledge on the role of human cognition biases for sustainability and sustainable behavior. Human cognition biases are defined as any deviation in decision making from the standard framework of rational choice. We distinguish between biases in individual...

This paper provides an overview of the work of Gigerenzer, thereby focusing on his criticisms of the Heuristics and Biases theory of Kahneman and Tversky. It is proposed that Gigerenzer's work can be both thematically and chronologically organized as: historical research on statistics =...

This paper contrasts the modern use of the assumption that rationality guides individual economic behaviour, as reflected in simple models of utility and profit maximization, to literature between 1890 and 1930 which sharply challenged the use of such an assumption, as well as to later...

The most fundamental solution concepts in Game Theory Nash equilibrium, backward induction, and iterated elimination of dominated strategies are based on the assumption that people are capable of predicting others' actions. These concepts require people to be able to view the game from the other...

The most fundamental solution concepts in Game Theory Nash equilibrium, backward induction, and iterated elimination of dominated strategies are based on the assumption that people are capable of predicting others' actions. These concepts require people to be able to view the game from the other...

Loss aversion is one of the most robust findings to have emerged from behavioral economics. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been devoted to nominal loss aversion, the interaction of loss aversion and money illusion. People tend to think of transactions in terms of their nominal...

In this paper we propose a theory of cognitive dissonance through imperfect memory. Cognitive dissonance is the tendency of a person to engage in self justification after a decision. We offer an interpretation of the single decision cognitive dissonance experiments: an agent has an unknown cost...