The research activity of the unit is based on the literature from behavioral decision theory (Kahneman, Tversky, 1979; 2000; Tversky, Kahneman, 1981; 1986). The unit will investingate how the context can affect the time perspective and the nature of the decision making process.
In particular, two are the most important facets of our work:
- the context of a decision making process can induce economic agents to be present-biased (myopic) or future-biased;
- time perspective manipulation of the context (present vs. future) can affect the nature of the decision and the satisfaction of economic agents.
The main goal of the research unit is to investigate how choice context can produce decisional bias with the realization of some experiments capable to consolidate and enrich results derived from extant research. However the research unit aims at widening empirical analysis toward innovative methodologies. These refer to diagnostic tools capable to collect data directly from cognitive processes. We refer to neuro-psycho-biological methods and in particular to FMRI.