Herbert Alexander Simon was an American political scientist whose work also influenced the fields of computer science, economics, and cognitive psychology. His primary research interest was decision-making within organizations and he is best known for the theories of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing". He received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1978 and the Turing Award in computer science in 1975. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature, spanning the fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and political science. He was at Carnegie Mellon University for most of his career, from 1949 to 2001, where he helped found the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, one of the first such departments in the world.
Bounded rationality is the idea that rationality is limited when individuals make decisions, and under these limitations, rational individuals will select a decision that is satisfactory rather than optimal.
Behavioral economics is the study of the psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors involved in the decisions of individuals or institutions, and how these decisions deviate from those implied by classical economic theory.
Richard Julius Herrnstein was an American psychologist at Harvard University. He was an active researcher in animal learning in the Skinnerian tradition. Herrnstein was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology until his death, and previously chaired the Harvard Department of Psychology for five years. With political scientist Charles Murray, he co-wrote The Bell Curve, a controversial 1994 book on human intelligence. He was one of the founders of the Society for Quantitative Analysis of Behavior.
Martin Elias Peter Seligman is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. Seligman is a strong promoter within the scientific community of his theories of well-being and positive psychology. His theory of learned helplessness is popular among scientific and clinical psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Seligman as the 31st most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Herd mentality describes how people can be influenced by the majority.
Gilbert Harman was an American philosopher, who taught at Princeton University from 1963 until his retirement in 2017. He published widely in philosophy of language, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, statistical learning theory, and metaphysics. He and George Miller co-directed the Princeton University Cognitive Science Laboratory. Harman taught or co-taught courses in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and Linguistics.
Geoffrey Franklin Miller is an American evolutionary psychologist, author, and associate professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico. He is known for his research on sexual selection in human evolution.
Freedom of choice describes an individual's opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties.
Jonathan Baron is an American psychologist. He is a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania in the science of decision-making.
William Haynes Starbuck graduated from Harvard University and the Carnegie Institute of Technology. He is an organizational scientist who has held professorships in social relations, sociology, business administration, and management.
Jonathan David Haidt is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business. His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.
The Paradox of Choice – Why More Is Less is a book written by American psychologist Barry Schwartz and first published in 2004 by Harper Perennial. In the book, Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. The book analyses the behavior of different types of people. This book argues that the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution and how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse.
Ehud Kalai is a prominent Israeli American game theorist and mathematical economist known for his contributions to the field of game theory and its interface with economics, social choice, computer science and operations research. He was the James J. O’Connor Distinguished Professor of Decision and Game Sciences at Northwestern University, 1975-2017, and currently is a Professor Emeritus of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences.
Kenneth J. Gergen is an American social psychologist and emeritus professor at Swarthmore College. He obtained his Bachelor of Arts from Yale University (1957) and his PhD from Duke University (1962).
Scott Barry Kaufman is an American cognitive scientist, author, podcaster, coach, and popular science writer. His writing and research focuses on intelligence, creativity, and human potential. Most media attention has focused on Kaufman's attempt to redefine intelligence. Kaufman is founder and director of the Center for Human Potential and has taught courses at Columbia, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. He is one of the top 20 most cited scientists studying intelligence, and is among the top 1% most cited scientists in the world. In 2015, he was named one of "50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world" by Business Insider,.
Adam Daniel Galinsky is an American social psychologist known for his research on leadership, power, negotiations, decision-making, diversity, and ethics. He is Vikram S. Pandit Professor of Business and Chair of Management Division at Columbia Business School.
The Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture is a series of public lectures held every year by the Kellogg Department of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences of Northwestern University.
Andreas Ortmann is a German-born economist and Professor of Experimental and Behavioural Economics at the UNSW Business School. He is best known for his work on experimental methodology in social sciences, heuristics and coordination games. Vernon L. Smith, in the acknowledgement to his A Life in Experimental Economics, described Ortmann as an "economic theorist, experimentalist, and intellectual historian par excellence in all".
Ido Erev holds a PhD from the University of North Carolina, 1990 in Cognitive/Quantitative Psychology.
