Wrap Up
12.2.14
Psychological assumptions…
 Permeate the social sciences
 Rational view
 Behavioral view
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Biased judgment
Malleable preferences
Influenced by social context!
 Psychology as a tool for policy!
Course Objectives
 Be a better consumer of psychological research
 Understanding the scientific method in social science
 Becoming familiar with experimental design
 Possess an additional set of tools for policy analysis,
design and implementation
 Behavioral economics
 Risk perception
 Attitudes and behavior change
 Intergroup relations
 Negotiation
 Behavioral economics
 Risk perception
 Attitudes and behavior change
 Intergroup relations
 Negotiation
Ethics, fairness, and responsibility
Behavioral economics
 Heuristics and biases approach
 System 1 vs System 2
 Bounded awareness
 Prospect theory – loss aversion
 Clinical vs. actuarial judgment
Risk perception
 Emotion and perception of risk
 Messaging and intuition about risk
 Also tied to emotion
 Difficulty in using objective information
Attitudes and behavior change
 Social norms (injunctive vs. descriptive)
 Tools of persuasion
 Central vs. Peripheral route to persuasion
Intergroup relations
 Individuals form groups readily
 Functions of forming groups
 Stigma and its links to prejudice and discrimination
 Cognitive, behavioral and affective response patterns
 Automaticity of many of these effects
Negotiation
 Cognitive barriers to rationality
 Many previous heuristics and biases in play
 Anchoring
 Self-serving biases
 Status quo bias
 Framing
What can we do about it?
 Use decision-analysis tools
 Acquire expertise
 Debias judgment
 Take an outside view
 Understand bias in others
 Educate others
 Perform decision audits