Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: A Neuroeconomic Analysis of Personality and Learning Strategic Games

University Of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis MN

Investigators

Abstract

This award funds a doctoral dissertation that combines methods from social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioral economics. The coPI seeks to measure the neurobiology of personality traits, the adaptive properties of these traits in the context of strategic games, and the relation of these traits to experience-based learning and abstract reasoning. In particular, the research investigates how the relative salience of potential gains and losses interact with specific personality traits to determine a decision-maker's success in using the relatively complicated mental process of backwards induction. The project extends current research on the neural correlates of personality and choice-behavior to the domain of strategic decision making and abstract reasoning. The project also provides a foundation for a formal description of personality traits as characteristic adaptive properties in the context of a strategic decision. The coPI plans to formulate and test an empirical model of learning in strategic games that includes personality traits as an independent variable. The broader impacts include training a graduate student in a wide variety of research methods that are important for interdisciplinary research in behavioral science. The research may also prove useful in helping us understand how to improve the ways information is presented to individuals who carry out collective decision tasks.