30463 - MIND AND SOCIETY: INTRO TO COGNITIVE SCIENCES

For a fruitful and effective learning experience, students should be comfortable with basic notions of mathematics and statistics for the social sciences (e.g., functions, differential calculus, optimization, linear algebra, probability, random variables), as well as with basic notions of microeconomics (utility functions, consumption decisions, choice under uncertainty, inter-temporal choice, Nash equilibrium).

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, embracing philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology. This course integrates insights from cognitive science into models of economic behavior. It discusses the limitations of standard economic models and surveys the ways in which laboratory experiments have been used to learn about cognition, preferences, and behavior. The first part of the course provides an introduction to major themes in cognitive science, with emphasis on the information-processing mechanisms of the mind. The remainder of the course presents experimental evidence on behavior which is puzzling from the perspective of standard microeconomic theories, and explores how psychology and neuroscience can help us to build richer, more realistic models of economic decision making.

1. Introduction to Behavioral Economics and Neuroscience
2. Choice under Certainty 
3. Judgment under Uncertainty
4. Choice under Risk and Uncertainty 
5. Choice over Time 
6. Strategic Interaction 

• Describe well established theories in cognitive science.
• Recognize the complexity of cognitive processes underlying decision-making.
• Summarize major findings on decision making from experimental economics.
• Identify strengths as well as limitations of standard microeconomic theories.

• Connect research and theories of cognition and behavior from diverse fields of the social sciences, including psychology, neuroscience, and economics.
• Develop novel theories of economic decision-making which take into account the biological and neuroscientific foundations of cognition.
• Apply research in cognitive science and behavioral economics to everyday events and challenges.

• Face-to-face lectures
• Interactive class activities (role playing, business game, simulation, online forum, instant polls)

Interactive class activities include participation in classroom experiments where students will be engaged in the judgment and decision-making tasks and in the economic games from the research studies we discuss in the lectures.

In order to evaluate the acquisition of the aforementioned learning outcomes, the assessment is based on written exams based on multiple-choice questions. Performance can be evaluated in two different ways:

1. A midterm exam covering the first part of the course, followed by a final exam covering the second part of the course. The grade in each exam is between 0 and 31. The course is passed if the grade in both exams is at least 18. In this case, the final grade is the mean of the two, rounded upwards.
2. A general exam which covers the whole course. The grade in the general exam is between 0 and 31. The course is passed if the grade in the general exam is at least 18.

Teaching materials are announced before the start of the course and indicated or uploaded to the Blackboard platform.