Behavioral Science Workshops
Invited guests, faculty, and students present current research in decision-making and judgment in our workshop series. The emphasis of our workshop series is on behavioral implications of decision and judgment models.
Workshop Details
- Where: Chicago Booth Harper Center, Classroom C06. Workshops will be offered IN-PERSON ONLY.
- When: Mondays 10:10–11:30 a.m. (unless otherwise noted)
- Who can attend: Workshops are open to Roman Family Center faculty, researchers, staff, and students, plus invited guests. Additional requests to attend the workshop are handled on a case-by-case basis. Please email yui.ito@chicagobooth.edu if you’d like to attend.
- Archive: For a full list of presenters 2004-present, see our workshop archive.
Winter Workshop Series
Monday, January 13, 2025
"David Melnikoff
Stanford University
“A Computational Theory of Flow”
Flow is a coveted psychological state characterized by deep immersion and engagement in an activity. While its benefits for productivity and health are well-documented, a formal, mechanistic understanding of the flow-generating process remains elusive. In this talk, I will present a solution: a mathematical model of flow's computational substrates—the first of its kind—supported by empirical tests of its core predictions. At the heart of the model lies the concept of mutual information, a fundamental quantity in information theory that quantifies the strength of association between two variables. The central claim is that the mutual information between desired end states and means of attaining them, or I(M;E), gives rise to flow. I will substantiate this claim with behavioral experiments demonstrating that, across multiple activities, increasing I(M;E) increases flow and has important downstream benefits, including enhanced attention, enjoyment, and skilled performance.
Monday, February 3, 2025
Kentaro Fujita
Ohio State University
"Exploring Lay Beliefs about the Nature of Self-Control"
There is considerable scientific disagreement about what constitutes an act of self-control. Whereas some scientists conceptualize self-control in terms of outcomes (e.g., preferring larger-later over smaller-sooner rewards), others instead conceptualize self-control in terms of process (e.g., effortful inhibition of unwanted thoughts, feelings, or actions). But what does the average individual think? Some scientists have argued that lay individuals conceptualize self-control in terms of willpower—a process that relies on something akin to effortful inhibition. I will present research that finds little support for this claim. Rather than distinguishing whether targets were described as deploying willpower or some alternative tactic, participants’ judgments of target’s self-control were more sensitive to whether they were successful or not in their goal-striving efforts. This suggests that lay individuals conceptualize self-control in terms of outcomes rather than process. Exploring lay beliefs is not just an academic question: what people believe self-control is may shape the tactics they use to enhance their likelihood of success, and influence how they judge the efforts of themselves and others. I will present initial evidence for this, showing that individual differences in beliefs may predict the types of tactics people adopt for their own goal-striving efforts. If I have time, I will describe some preliminary work extending this research to explore common assumptions about self-control as requiring abstinence from temptation. More broadly, rather than ask the question “whether” people have self-control = willpower beliefs, I will argue that it is more interesting to ask the questions “who,” “when,” and “why.”
Monday, March 10, 2025
Jon Jachimowicz
Harvard Business School
Title & abstract coming soon.
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