On March 26th the university's Economic Psychology and Decision Research Group hosted a research workshop at the Reebok Stadium attended by thirty researchers and students from across the UK and Europe. The workshop, with the theme Economic Psychology: New Methods and Findings, was sponsored by two leading research organisations, the Society for the Advancement of Behavioural Economics and the International Association for Research into Economic Psychology (IAREP).
Delegates were welcomed by Vice-Chancellor Dr George Holmes, who remarked that as an economist himself, he was particularly intrigued by the issue of the rationality of economic decision makers. This was explored in the first keynote address at the workshop, When Rationality Fails: Lessons from the Credit Crisis, by economist and author Paul Ormerod. He argued that 'the financial crisis raised fundamental problems for mainstream economic theory' and that 'economic psychology offers much more realistic models of how decision makers – individuals, firms, governments – actually behave'. This was illustrated by the second keynote speaker, Swedish psychologist Prof. Tommy Gärling of Gothenburg University, who presented a psychological account of how cognitive biases partly cause anomalies in stock markets which are then exaggerated by emotion and social influences to cause economic booms, bubbles and busts. Other speakers explored topics such as consumer credit decisions, risk perception and behaviour, forecasting and perceived inflation, and the role of emotion and numeracy in economic behaviour.
The workshop concluded with a lively discussion of the nature and role of a psychological analysis of macro-economic problems, led by Prof Alan Lewis of the University of Bath, who is the current president of IAREP. He argued that social psychology is essential for understanding how the economy behaves, but economic policy ultimately depends on what constitutes a 'good society' and the extent to which this is based on altruism and the pursuit of well-being, rather than materialism and the pursuit of wealth.
Details of the programme, the abstracts booklet and written versions of the keynote addresses can be found on the workshop website: www.bolton.ac.uk/conferences/economicpsychology/|. For further information about the university's Economic Psychology and Decision Research Group contact Prof. Rob Ranyard (r.ranyard@bolton.ac.uk|).