Please, not another bias! An evolutionary take on behavioural economics.

Jason Collins explains how his “evolutionary approach” to decision-making relates to other approaches of behaviour. This piece therefore not only serves as a good introduction to this “evolutionary approach” but also serves as a great introduction to these other approaches of behaviour namely neoclassical perfect rationality which involves mainly probability calculus, conventional behavioural economics which involves pointing out exceptions/biases where people do not act as the neoclassical models predict, and a newer variant of behavioural economics which turn to culturally and environmentally specific heuristics to explain behaviour.

Comment from our editors:

This presentation on human behaviour was delivered at the Marketing Science Ideas Exchange by Jason Collins (PhD). It is a great introduction to the history of thought on human behaviour. He talks his way through neoclassical perfect rationality, the behavioural revolution, the heuristics revolution and his own evolutionary take on human behaviour. It can help students to see that there are different opinions and interpretations of human behaviour. I encourage students reading this post to make up their own minds regarding which approach or combination of approaches works best to explain behaviour.

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