Behavioral Economics Commons^™

Moving Ahead By Thinking Backwards, Conner Lewis, Amanda Wiener

Undergraduate Research Symposium 2014

Although some research exists regarding collegiate GPAs, little is known about which individual student characteristics predict college graduation. We study 100 students from the University of Minnesota Morris. Information collected includes demographics, standard personality traits (known in Psychology as the “Big Five”), two economic preferences (risk aversion and patience), and three cognitive skills (numeracy, non-verbal IQ, “Hit15”).“Hit 15” is a game played against the computer in which each player must add 1, 2, or 3 on each turn. Winning is exactly hitting fifteen first; players take turns going first and the starting point total varies (game theory calls solving this …

Altruistically Inclined?: The Behavioral Sciences, Evolutionary Theory, And The Origins Of Reciprocity, Alexander J. Field

Faculty Book Gallery

Altruistically Inclined? examines the implications of recent research in the natural sciences for two important social scientific approaches to individual behavior: the economic/rational choice approach and the sociological/anthropological. It considers jointly two controversial and related ideas: the operation of group selection within early human evolutionary processes and the likelihood of modularity—domain-specific adaptations in our cognitive mechanisms and behavioral predispositions.

Experimental research shows that people will often cooperate in one-shot prisoner's dilemma (PD) games and reject positive offers in ultimatum games, contradicting commonly accepted notions of rationality. Upon first appearance, predispositions to behave in this fashion could not have been favored …

The Sfa Economist Vol. 3 No. 2, Robert Maxwell, Judson White, A. C. Butler

SFA Economist, 1956-1960

No abstract provided.