Riassunto analitico
In different disciplines it is studied how people make choices, with different aims and through different methodologies. The process of decision making is a core subject among psychologists, neurologists, economists, sociologists and philosophers. In particular, in recent years neuroscientists, thanks to the technological advances of the tools of investigation, have been able to make a huge step forward in the study of decision making by scratching the surface of the "black box" that is our brain. The discoveries sparked a process of spill-over of knowledge who influenced different disciplines and led to the creation of neuroeconomics. This thesis follows the same path it has the aim of creating a model of decision making where the individual is modelled to follow evidences and theories proposed by psychologist and neuroscientists. With this purpose we consider an heterogeneous literature of reference, as Kahneman, Gigerenzer and Evans but also Camerer, O'Doherty and De Martino. We are not the first who has tried such a thing, dierent models in recent years were developed (e.g. Glimcher and Aldo [2003], Rustichini et al. [2013], Brocas and Carrillo [2013]). Inspired by these studies, among others, we provided the decision maker (DM) of two dierent processes of thought. One is the high elaboration process (H), aware and rational; the other is the low elaboration process (L), who is instinctive and automatic. However following the default interventionism theory of Thompson [2009] we also assert, in opposition with the majority of the existing models, that the instinctive process is always active and just in some cases the individual would consciously take the decision and act as a rational agent. An innovative contribution to the existing literature is the prediction of deviations from a rational behaviour, even if the H process is used, a phenomenon so far considered only from a theoretical stand point. These deviations were until now considered in theories. A further contribution is the presence of a repetition of the decision by which we consider the possibility for the individual to receive the feedback of the first decision and exploit the characteristics of the two processes to improve upon the previous choice. This possibility, in our view, reflects some behaviour that had been, so far, misinterpreted. We think that this model, taking in consideration the dual process theory of default intervention, provides a good explanation of why people sometimes act in agreement with the economic theories but other times in contrast to them.
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Abstract
In different disciplines it is studied how people make choices, with different aims and through different methodologies. The process of decision making is a core subject among psychologists, neurologists, economists, sociologists and philosophers. In particular, in recent years neuroscientists, thanks to the technological advances of the tools of investigation, have been able to make a huge step forward in the study of decision making by scratching the surface of the "black box" that is our brain. The discoveries sparked a process of spill-over of knowledge who influenced different disciplines and led to the creation of neuroeconomics. This thesis follows the same path it has the aim of creating a model of decision making where the individual is modelled to follow evidences and theories proposed by psychologist and neuroscientists. With this purpose we consider an heterogeneous literature of reference, as Kahneman, Gigerenzer and Evans but also Camerer, O'Doherty and De Martino. We are not the first who has tried such a thing, dierent models in recent years were developed (e.g. Glimcher and Aldo [2003], Rustichini et al. [2013], Brocas and Carrillo [2013]). Inspired by these studies, among others, we provided the decision maker (DM) of two dierent processes of thought. One is the high elaboration process (H), aware and rational; the other is the low elaboration process (L), who is instinctive and automatic. However following the default interventionism theory of Thompson [2009] we also assert, in opposition with the majority of the existing models, that the instinctive process is always active and just in some cases the individual would consciously take the decision and act as a rational agent. An innovative contribution to the existing literature is the prediction of deviations from a rational behaviour, even if the H process is used, a phenomenon so far considered only from a theoretical stand point. These deviations were until now considered in theories. A further contribution is the presence of a repetition of the decision by which we consider the possibility for the individual to receive the feedback of the first decision and exploit the characteristics of the two processes to improve upon the previous choice. This possibility, in our view, reflects some behaviour that had been, so far, misinterpreted. We think that this model, taking in consideration the dual process theory of default intervention, provides a good explanation of why people sometimes act in agreement with the economic theories but other times in contrast to them.
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