Political Psychology and Economy

Professors Davis, Dawes, Keech, Lerner, Miller, and Skinner

The discipline of political science has been invigorated by the systematic importing of theory and methods from psychology and economics. In many political science departments, political psychology and political economy are seen as being at odds, but in SDS, modeling humans as purposive beings, sometimes called "rational choice," is not at odds with understanding human behavior as fallible or adaptive. Humans have more information than they can process, and their behavior is subject to the biases and anomalies referred to above in the statement on behavioral decision research. We seek to train scholars with the best insights of psychology and economics for the study of political behavior, political institutions, and public policy making.

Other SDS Research Areas:
Technological Change and Industrial Evolution
Behavioral Decision Research
Organizations
Computational Modeling of Complex Adaptive Social Systems