6th Annual Marlene Porsche Graduate School of Neuroeconomics Symposium

The 6th Annual Marlene Porsche Graduate School of Neuroeconomics Symposium takes place on 24 May 2024 at the University of Zurich.

We are delighted to announce that Prof. Rahul Bhui (MIT) will be holding the Marlene Porsche Memorial Lecture, entitled Rationality in context: preference, perception, and politics. Deviations from rational judgment seem to be everywhere in life – but are they really deviations, or might they be features of a mind well-calibrated to a complex world? In his lecture, Prof. Bhui will discuss how a classic example of irrationality, context dependence, can reflect sensible adaptation to one’s environment. Part I of the talk focuses on how adaptive principles can explain a recently discovered context effect in consumer choice and perceptual judgment. Part II centers on how this lens can help dissect the political mind in context and shed light on phenomena such as susceptibility to fake news. Such work suggests that what seems irrational may be our best strategy under limited time, energy, and data. This framework offers broad insight into domains as diverse as preference, perception, and politics.

The Annual Symposium takes place at the Department of Economics, room SOF-G21, Schönberggasse 1, 8001 Zurich, and is open to all.

Program