Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele

Faculty Member, Filosofia

Other Affiliations: University of California, Los Angeles, Psychology

About

In our everyday choices we often deceive ourselves. Rather like Charlie Brown, with his bewilderment on meeting the “little red-haired girl”, our minds are often over-heated with emotion and befuddled. When we save, spend and invest, we are not the rational and lightning-fast calculators of ‘utility’ envisaged by the mathematical models of economists. We may be wrong-headed, but there is method in our stupidity. Our errors are pervasive, recurrent and predictable. They stem from a logic different from that of mathematics, but no less systematic, which follows heuristic patterns investigated by numerous ingenious experiments. The result is a “gallery of financial errors (or horrors!)” explained by some sort of cognitive unconscious which filters reality and determines our reactions.
The hypothesis I am working on, based on fMRI evidence, is that our decisions derive from ceaseless negotiation between automatic and controlled processes, between affect and cognition, and from the interplay among the synapses of the corresponding cerebral areas.

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