Decision Science News

THE SOCIETY FOR NEUROECONOMICS

The Society for Neuroeconomics promotes the research and dissemination of knowledge in neuroeconomics. The society was incorporated in 2005 after meeting informally at workshops and other meetings over the last five years.

What is Neuroeconomics?

Neuroeconomics is a multidisciplinary research field incorporating neuroscience, economics, and psychology aimed at developing an understanding of how we make choices. It looks at the brain when we evaluate decisions, categorize risks and rewards, and when we interact with others. (from Wikipedia)

“Neuroeconomics is an interdisciplinary research program with the goal of building a biological model of decision making in economic environments. Neuroeconomists ask, how does the embodied brain enable the mind (or groups of minds) to make economic decisions? By combining techniques from cognitive neuroscience and experimental economics we can now watch neural activity in real time, observe how this activity depends on the economic environment, and test hypotheses about how the emergent mind makes economic decisions. Neuroeconomics allows us to better understand both the wide range of heterogeneity in human behavior, and the role of institutions as ordered extensions of our minds.” (from the Neuroeconomics Explained post from professor Kevin McCabe’s Weblog)

Read more about Neuroeconomics here.

The Society for Neuroeconomics Current Officers:

President:

Colin Camerer

Secretary/Treasurer:
Aldo Rustichini

Chief Information Officer:
Kevin McCabe

Immediate Past President:
Paul Glimcher

Full Program of the last Society conference, with abstracts

SOCIETY FOR JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING 2005 ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The Society for Judgment and Decision Making is an interdisciplinary academic organization dedicated to the study of normative, descriptive, and prescriptive theories of decision. Its members include psychologists, economists, organizational researchers, decision analysts, and other decision researchers. The Society’s primary event is its Annual Meeting at which Society members present their research.

The Society for Judgment and Decision Making’s Annual conference will be held at the Sheraton Centre in Toronto, ON, Canada, from November 12-14, 2005. As in 2004, A full day (Saturday) has been added to the schedule to make room for more presentations and for two Keynote Speakers.

Keynote Speakers

• Keynote speaker #1: Michael Posner, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, University of Oregon, and author of many path-breaking articles on neural mechanisms and structures underlying selective attention.

• Keynote speaker #2: Nassim Nicholas Taleb, luminary, friend of Decision Science News, and author of Fooled by Randomness.

Women in SJDM
Friday November 11, 2005 from 3:00 – 5:00 pm
City Hall Room of the Sheraton

This is the 2nd annual Women in SJDM conference networking event to
promote advancement of women in the field of JDM. The event will begin with a panel discussion of leading female JDM scholars who will cover topics such as salary negotiation and disparities between men and women, dual-career issues, work/family issues, and tenure angst. Panelists include Linda Babcock, Maya Bar-Hillel, Colleen Moore, Sandra Schneider, and Elke Weber. The event will end with an informal networking session. Both men and women who are interested in these and similar topics are encouraged to attend. Coffee and pastries will be served.

Awards

• The Best Student Poster Award is given for the best poster presentation whose first author is a student member of SJDM.

• The Jane Beattie Travel Memorial Scholarship subsidizes travel to the United States for scholarly pursuits related to JDM research, including attendance of the annual meeting.

Program Committee

Craig Fox (institutional memory)
Dan Ariely (program chair)
Derek Koehler (conference coordinator)
Ellen Peters (speaker coordinator)
George Wu (poster chair)
Judy Lin (Organizer galore)
Maya Bar-Hillel (fearless president)
Mike DeKay (institutional memory)
Rachel Croson (communications)
Rebecca Ratner (social chair)
Yuval Rottenstreich (equipment coordinator)

Hotel Information

This year’s meeting will be held at the Sheraton Centre, Toronto. Sheraton Centre, Toronto 123 Queen Street West Toronto, Ontario M5H 2M9 Canada (416) 361-1000 http://www.sheratontoronto.com/

Further details regarding this event are available at http://www.sjdm.org or http://www.sjdm.org/programs/2005-hotel.pdf

THE 27TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL DECISION MAKING (SMDM).

This year’s SMDM Annual Meeting will take place from October 21-24, 2005 in San Francisco, CA. The meeting hotel is the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.

The theme of the 2005 meeting will be Translating Medical Decision Making Research into Practice. We plan to highlight the ways in which decision science – ranging from decision analysis, clinical decision aids, cost-effectiveness analysis, and clinical modeling is translated into clinical care and health system operations. We encourage submission of abstracts in all relevant areas, with a particular emphasis on this year’s theme of translating knowledge into practice. As we will have an overlapping session with ISOQOL, we are also interested in abstracts of interest to members of both societies. Abstracts for all oral and poster presentations will be selected by reviewers representing a range of disciplines, who are blinded to authorship.

We will be featuring distinguished speakers presenting cutting-edge research that highlights the importance of the psychological context within which medical decision making occurs. Our goal is to begin a conversation among the membership about the importance of the underlying psychological processes of medical decision making and to continue to build on this theme in the coming years.

The Society for Medical Decision Making’s mission is to improve health outcomes through the advancement of proactive systematic approaches to clinical decision making and policy-formation in health care by providing a scholarly forum that connects and educates researchers, providers, policy-makers, and the public.

Register for the SMDM 2005 Conference online

Download the 2005 Annual Meeting Brochure and registration form here

Search and view the oral and poster abstracts from the upcoming 2005 SMDM Annual Meeting

DECISION MAKING@SPSP 2006 PRE-CONFERENCE

All are invited to attend and present at the first ever Pre-Conference on Judgment and Decision Making preceding the January 2006 SPSP meeting in Palm Springs, CA. The inaugural JDM@SPSP pre-conference will be held during the evening of January 25th and during the day of January 26.

The goal of the JDM@SPSP pre-conference is to highlight the emerging nexus of social, personality, judgment, and decision making research. The meeting features an exciting lineup of speakers:

Barry Schwartz
Brian Knutson
Daniel Gilbert
Daniel Kahneman
George Loewenstein
Jennifer Lerner
Norbert Schwarz
Tom Gilovich

With generous support from the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the NSF’s programs on Social Psychology and Decision, Risk and Management Science, the pre-conference will offer 20 competitive travel scholarships ($300) to graduate students who are first author on a poster. In addition, all graduate students who register for JDM@SPSP will receive a 1-year (2005) subscription to the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making. The deadline for poster submissions is December 1.

Registration is now open and will close when our limited space is filled or December 31, whichever comes first.

Organizers:
Dan Ariely, Jennifer Lerner, Leif Nelson and Leaf Van Boven

The AMA Foundation announces Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most by Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan as the recipient of the 2005 Berry-AMA Book Prize. The book offers a “back to the basics” approach to marketing by advocating that consumers want products that are “simply better” in terms of quality, reliability and value. Barwise and Meehan outline an actionable framework for managers to be able to understand customer needs and to create reliable solutions to meet those needs.

Patrick Barwise is Professor of Management and Marketing and Chair, Marketing Faculty for the London Business School. Sean Meehan is the Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management at IMD, in Laussanne, Switzerland.

The DSN editor is proud to be London Business School colleagues with the winner and a finalist for the Berry Book Prize, the latter being Tim Ambler for Marketing and the Bottom Line.

The 2005 Berry/AMA Book Prize finalists were:

Accountable Marketing : The Economics of Data-Driven Marketing (Thomson Texere), by Peter Rosenwald

Effective Advertising : Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works (Marketing for a New Century) (Sage Publications), by Gerard J. Tellis

Marketing and the Bottom Line, Second Edition (Prentice Hall, Pearson Education), by Tim Ambler

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable(Penguin Group), by Seth Godin

Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most (Harvard Business School), by Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan

ASSISTANT PROFESSORSHIP TENURE TRACK POSITIONS IN PSYCHOLOGY AVAILABLE

EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY: University of California, San Diego (http://psy.ucsd.edu). The psychology department at UCSD invites applications for an Assistant Professor (with the possibility of a more senior hire pending availability of funding) tenure track, in Experimental Psychology. We seek an individual who is pursuing research in any substantive area of experimental psychology (e.g., social, developmental, cognitive, perception, learning, neuroscience, emotion, etc.) with clear implications for understanding the mechanisms of psychopathology. Salary is commensurate with qualifications and based on UC salary scales. Candidates should send letter, curriculum vita, research statement, reprints, and names of three referees to Experimental Psychology Search Committee – JDMS; Department of Psychology, 0109; University of California, San Diego; 9500 Gilman Drive; La Jolla CA 92093-0109. Immigration status of non-citizens should be stated in the vita. Complete applications received by Monday, October 31, 2005 will receive full consideration, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled. The University of California is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer with a strong institutional commitment to the achievement of excellence and diversity among its faculty and staff.

Craig R. M. McKenzie
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
9500 Gilman Drive – MC 0109
UC San Diego
La Jolla CA 92093-0109
http://psy.ucsd.edu/~mckenzie/

APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY: University of California, San Diego (http://psy.ucsd.edu). The Psychology Department at UCSD invites applications for an Assistant Professor (with the possibility of a more senior hire pending availability of funding) tenure track, in any area of Applied Psychology. We seek an individual who is pursuing research with an applied emphasis in any area of experimental psychology (e.g., social, developmental, cognitive, perception, learning, neuroscience, etc.). Salary is commensurate with qualifications and based on UC salary scales. Candidates should send letter, curriculum vita, research statement, reprints, and names of three referees to Applied Psychology Search Committee – JDMS; Department of Psychology, 0109; 9500 Gilman Drive; University of California, San Diego; La Jolla CA 92093-0109. Immigration status of non-citizens should be stated in the vita. Complete applications received by Monday, October 31, 2005 will receive full consideration, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled. The University of California is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer with a strong institutional commitment to the achievement of excellence and diversity among its faculty and staff.

Craig R. M. McKenzie
Associate Professor
Department of Psychology
9500 Gilman Drive – MC 0109
UC San Diego
La Jolla CA 92093-0109
http://psy.ucsd.edu/~mckenzie/

2006 AMA WINTER EDUCATORS’ CONFERENCE

February 17 – February 20, 2006

Tradewinds Resort St. Petersburg, FL

Conference Chairs:

Jean L. Johnson, Washington State University
John Hulland, University of Pittsburgh

Conference registration not yet available. Check here or here

2006 AMA SUMMER EDUCATORS’ CONFERENCE

August 4 – August 7, 2006

Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Chicago, IL

Conference Co-Chairs:

Dhruv Grewal, Babson College
Michael Levy, Babson College
R. Krishnan, University of Miami

Paper and Proposal Deadline: January 9, 2006

Full Call for Papers and Updates

The annual Berry-AMA Book Prize for the best book in marketing recognizes innovative ideas and impact on marketing and related fields. It is named in honor of the generous contributions of Leonard L. Berry, distinguished author and professor, and his wife Nancy F. Berry to the American Marketing Association (AMA) Foundation.

The 2005 Berry/AMA Book Prize finalists are:

Accountable Marketing : The Economics of Data-Driven Marketing (Thomson Texere), by Peter Rosenwald

Effective Advertising : Understanding When, How, and Why Advertising Works (Marketing for a New Century) (Sage Publications), by Gerard J. Tellis

Marketing and the Bottom Line, Second Edition (Prentice Hall, Pearson Education), by Tim Ambler

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable(Penguin Group), by Seth Godin

Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most (Harvard Business School), by Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan

Tenure-track positions in social psychology are available at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

The Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, Boulder, invites applications for a tenure-track position in social psychology beginning August 2006. The department anticipates hiring at the assistant professor level. The University of Colorado, Boulder, is committed to diversity and equality in education and employment. In that spirit, applications at all levels will be considered from those who would strengthen the department’s diversity.

Candidates in any area of social psychology will be considered. In particular, we are interested in those who can contribute to the existing strengths of the program; these include social psychological approaches to health, judgment and decision making, social neuroscience, and social cognition. Special consideration will be given to candidates who can also contribute to our strengths in statistics and research methods. The successful candidate will be expected to teach at the graduate and undergraduate levels, to supervise undergraduate and graduate students in research, and to maintain an active research program. Salary is competitive and dependent upon experience.

All applicants should send a curriculum vitae, a statement of research interests, a statement of undergraduate and graduate teaching interests, representative research papers, and at least three letters of recommendation to: Charles M. Judd, Chair, Social Search Committee, Department of Psychology, University of Colorado, 345 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0345. We will begin reviewing applications November 15, 2005 and will continue to review applications until the position is filled.

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS: THE HIDDEN ROLE OF CHANCE IN THE MARKETS AND IN LIFE

Nassim Nicholas Taleb does it all, he’s a successful trader, author, and academic. His book Fooled by Randomness is soon to come out in paperback, and draws on sources from Finance to Literature to address the role of chance in life.

FLAP:

“The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: Yogi Berra, the baseball legend; Karl Popper, the philosopher knowledge; Solon, the Ancient World’s wisest man; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Ulysses. In addition we meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his life, but who also falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness. But the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed: the lucky fool in the right place at the right time. The embodiment of the survival of the least fit. Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained through chance. A monkey banging on the keyboard may eventually produce the Iliad, but would you sign him to write the sequel?”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Academic & Teaching:

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is Dean’s Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is a fellow in Mathematics in Finance and an adjunct Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. Taleb is also a visiting Professor of Risk Management at the Université Paris-Dauphine.

Selected Publications:

(2004). “Blowup” versus “Bleed”: What Does Empirical Psychology Say About the Preference For Negative Skewness? Journal of Behavioral Finance, 5, 1.

(2005). Roots of Unfairness. Journal of the International Comparative Literature Association: Literary Research/Recherche Littéraire 21.41-42.

(2005). On the Risk of the Unforecastable and its Perception”, in Preventing Genocide: A Handbook for Foreign Policy Professionals, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Publications.

Quote:

“My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and those who don’t have the guts to sometimes say: I don’t know….” (You may not be able to change the world but can at least get some entertainment and make a living out of the epistemic arrogance of the human race).

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s Home Page