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Post by rebeccah on Apr 17, 2016 6:43:13 GMT
Just recently, scientists have begun connecting economics to neuroscience. This particular connection really surprised me because I wouldn’t think of them as interconnected as they appear to be. In reality, they are very strongly related. Neuroscience is helping economists to understand the brain to try to study how and why people make the choices they do. This video does a good job of further explaining the mechanisms discussed in “Do economists need brains?” www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6CQjaP98Ew After watching the video, you should have a sense of how this information is put to use. One function I see is its application in marketing. By knowing how the brain perceives different products and goods, marketers can better sell and advertise their own products.
What other functions do you think neuroeconomics are helpful for? Additionally, the experiment on monkeys showed that they react fairly similarly to inequality and rational decision-making as humans. Capuchin monkeys, like humans were found to react negatively to inequality, as seen in the experiment in the reading. This seems contradictory because it’s always stated that humans have this advanced decision-making rationale that differentiates them from other animals, yet we see it present in monkeys as well. So I ask this, do you think equality is an inherent trait for any or all animals? Why or why not? How can this knowledge help advance our study in the field of economics? |
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Post by connorthompson on Apr 17, 2016 22:17:09 GMT
Regarding the first question: I think neuroeconomics can be extremely useful in a wide variety of industries. For me, the first thing that comes to mind is media. It's an entire industry guided by attention spans and personal tastes. Knowing the mechanisms people have that effect their particular tastes for say a TV show or a website can help people like content developers and creators make content that appeals to a particular audience. Knowing why people like these things, and the thought processes one has for choosing what to be entertained by, can be extremely lucrative financially and creatively.
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Post by rebeccah on Apr 17, 2016 23:19:33 GMT
connorthompson this is a really good point. Taking this into account, many different careers use info from neuroeconomics to help them with their jobs.
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Post by vannahyazon on Apr 20, 2016 5:25:34 GMT
I like how Antonio Rangel spoke about how the workings of the decision-making system change in more complex forms of choice like self-control or altruism. This speaks more to your second topic on animals. I took the Mind of Dog Fiat Lux which focused on Dog Cognition, and dogs have alot of imitation of their owner's thoughts and feelings to the point that it no longer is an imitation, the dogs have empathy for their owners etc. (#mirrorneurons) So, i feel like inequality is inherent in all animals, i mean dogs are domestic so they can sense inequality in their owners and transition those feelings to dog world and dog life, but i mean inequality has to do with animals in general because of survival and the more unequal, the less chance they could survive, so i guess its inherent. I feel like if we could test our models on animals, the external validity would go up because it could mimic the population of interest being humans, because animals feel the inequality, so if you test for it, it could mimic the reactions or results in humans, i dunno.
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rkipp
New Member
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Post by rkipp on Apr 20, 2016 6:35:08 GMT
I agree with vannahyazon that animals have an inherent equality trait since it helps them make rational decisions and ultimately survive. Although I am sure that humans' ability to make such rational decisions and recognize inequality is more sophisticated than most animals, I still think animals have, to some extent, the ability to recognize inequality. With that being said, I think the difference in sophistication levels between animal and humans - as stated in the "Do Economists Need Brains?" article - creates an issue in advancing the study on neuroeconomics since studying animals' brains will not accurately correlate with humans' brains. Nonetheless, if there continues to be evidence that all animals have this inherent equality trait, then hopefully more attention will be given to recognize the influential implications that neuroeconomics can have on all forms of life. This recognition could eventually help advance its study on humans through gaining more funding due to its importance. |
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Post by cliffordzhang on Apr 20, 2016 17:07:25 GMT
Humans are just another species of animal. For all we know, every animal in the animal kingdom could possess this trait but the limiting factor is that humans have set very high standards in our experiments that other animals' behaviors cannot meet.
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Post by rebeccah on Apr 20, 2016 17:16:35 GMT
I agree that we should think of humans as another species of animal, so it seems most animals do have this inherent trait for equality. As Vannah said, equality is essential for survival when you get right down to it, so I do agree with you guys that there is some inherent trait for equality in animals.
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Post by hrhunter on Apr 21, 2016 19:57:07 GMT
For your question regarding neuroeconomics, I feel like any profession regarding interactions with people uses neuroeconomics. All human interactions involve decision making, therefore would include neuroeconomics to some extent. Think about a career such as teaching. Students choose to do their assignments if they perceive the reward of completing it to be larger than the reward of not doing so. If teachers had a handle on neuroeconomics and were able to convince their students that doing homework (although time-consuming and tiresome) has a greater reward than just relaxing and avoiding it, more students would complete their work, be more successful, etc. This is just one example of how a career that might not first come to mind when considering decision-making actually does involve neuroeconomics.
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Post by jreitsma on Apr 21, 2016 22:14:28 GMT
I think this argument is definitely valid. Decision making is in fact, the most important function we have and the most used. Mostly every action we make is because of our decision making and understanding that through economics is a great potential resource for many different areas and occupations in our everyday life.
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