Neuroeconomics

In this chapter, we explore examples of how a combination of neuroscientific, psychological, and economic approaches has shed light on why we behave in particular ways, over and above what any one of these individual approaches can reveal. We focus on specific examples of research that has made a contribution to the understanding of how decision-making depends on expected value, emotion, and personality, and how learning and decision-making are influenced by prediction error, delay, ownership, and cognitive load. These examples demonstrate how experiments have answered key questions or posed novel questions that set the direction for future research. Taken together, the results of these experiments demonstrate how the interplay between psychological factors and decision-making processes can shed light on why we sometimes make apparently irrational decisions.