PREF LEARNHEUR | Learning heuristics in preference elicitation tasks: insights from behavioural, computational and neurobiological investigations

Summary
Although decision theory assumes that when making a choice, individuals attribute values to available options, compare those values and select the option with the highest, the succession of choices faced during classical preference elicitation tasks might trigger the emergence of additional heuristics, implemented to perform those tasks in a fast, yet adaptive manner. This project aim at pioneering the isolation of such heuristic development, in a dynamical framework where both the task features and the agents’ own preferences are learned from previous trials, and influence subsequent behavior. This framework suggests that agents’ preferences will depend on the choice sequence, thus vary according to predictable patterns through different instantiations of the same task. Thereby, it captures a new component of individual preferences, which we refer to as task-related preferences. Combining behavioral experiments, computational modelling and functional brain imaging, we propose to reveal and measure the behavioral variance accounted by the task-related preferences, to model their emergence during the task, and to incorporate them in a coherent neuro-cognitive model of decision-making. Overall, this project will contribute to 1) refine current neurocognitive and economic models of decision-making, 2) train a promising cognitive neuroscientist to tackle human decision issues relevant to social sciences, with advanced quantitative economic/computational tools, and 3) foster fruitful cross-talks between scholars from economics, psychology, and neuroscience at the host institution. The scientific contribution seems particularly important given that preferences are one of the current conceptual cornerstones used to understand our society at the micro- and macroeconomic level, to guide and assess public policies aiming to maximize people’s well-being, to characterize normal and pathological behaviors, and to unravel the neurobiological mechanisms underlying decision-making.
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More information & hyperlinks
Web resources: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/657904
Start date: 01-05-2015
End date: 30-04-2017
Total budget - Public funding: 165 598,80 Euro - 165 598,00 Euro
Cordis data

Original description

Although decision theory assumes that when making a choice, individuals attribute values to available options, compare those values and select the option with the highest, the succession of choices faced during classical preference elicitation tasks might trigger the emergence of additional heuristics, implemented to perform those tasks in a fast, yet adaptive manner. This project aim at pioneering the isolation of such heuristic development, in a dynamical framework where both the task features and the agents’ own preferences are learned from previous trials, and influence subsequent behavior. This framework suggests that agents’ preferences will depend on the choice sequence, thus vary according to predictable patterns through different instantiations of the same task. Thereby, it captures a new component of individual preferences, which we refer to as task-related preferences. Combining behavioral experiments, computational modelling and functional brain imaging, we propose to reveal and measure the behavioral variance accounted by the task-related preferences, to model their emergence during the task, and to incorporate them in a coherent neuro-cognitive model of decision-making. Overall, this project will contribute to 1) refine current neurocognitive and economic models of decision-making, 2) train a promising cognitive neuroscientist to tackle human decision issues relevant to social sciences, with advanced quantitative economic/computational tools, and 3) foster fruitful cross-talks between scholars from economics, psychology, and neuroscience at the host institution. The scientific contribution seems particularly important given that preferences are one of the current conceptual cornerstones used to understand our society at the micro- and macroeconomic level, to guide and assess public policies aiming to maximize people’s well-being, to characterize normal and pathological behaviors, and to unravel the neurobiological mechanisms underlying decision-making.

Status

CLOSED

Call topic

MSCA-IF-2014-EF

Update Date

28-04-2024
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EU-Programme-Call
Horizon 2020
H2020-EU.1. EXCELLENT SCIENCE
H2020-EU.1.3. EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
H2020-EU.1.3.2. Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility
H2020-MSCA-IF-2014
MSCA-IF-2014-EF Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF-EF)