Research Group Conversation

Following from the previous post, working on topics for an evolving research group at intersection of economic psychology & ethical aspects of behavioural policy. Over my career, have been most interested in subjective aspects of economic and policy systems, how regular humans navigate and experience complex administrative environments, and how our knowledge of this shapes how we think about the ethics of different types of policy actions broadly defined. The history of behavioural economics and behavioural public policy more generally is grounded to some degree in eclectic economic psychological methods and theory and engagements with industry and policy. And there has been an increasing professionalisation of behavioural science in policy and industry, increasing the need for reflection on the legitimacy and ethics of this work. The group will create space for capacity building in these areas, including engagement with a wide set of existing groups and institutional developments including IBBPA, BR-UK, IAREP, GAABS, and others. The key literatures I want to both draw from and advance in specific ways through research i) the ethics of behavioural applications ii) literature on subjective aspects of administrative processes iii) the subjective experience of consequential economic decisions and outcomes iv) the development of naturalistic everyday measurement techniques such as day reconstruction for use in economic psychology applications v) the experience and valuation of time. I hope to work with students at all levels, and a network of academic collaborations, policy partnerships and industry engagement to develop a research environment with a focus on academic rigour but with a strong applied and institutional sensibility, with the latter being one key driver of theoretical and empirical development. AI will feature to some extent in the group with a focus on ethics of application and some element of transparent collaborative experimentation in its use. But it will have a clear philosophy of fostering dynamic human engagements as fundamental to theory building and application development. I have no idea whether it is true but I have always felt that some element of controlled human chaos is helpful for the emergence of important research in economic psychology (e.g. see Katona, Ainslie, Thaler, all very eclectic routes to their ideas). I hope as well as strong research papers, we create some interesting points of contact between the evolving economic psychological literature and the wider environment, that it creates a supportive space not just for research papers written with me but for people to pursue some big thoughts in these spaces. I am currently still Department chair and fighting with a big part of my brain tied behind my back but will unfold these ideas over the next year. Posting for conversation. Formal proposals, calls for collaboration later.