Abstract

Normative accounts of learning suggest that choice behaviour should follow an expected utility model. Everyday reality, behavioural and economic observations, highlight pervasive violations of such optimality. I will first outline a standard view of learning and then consider examples of irrational influences on behaviour. For example, when a decision maker weighs the relative value of future and immediate rewards and when a decision maker chooses between options where these are framed as a win or a loss. Violations of rationality in these circumstances can be accounted for by a model that proposes interacting brain systems that subsumes a goal-oriented, a habitual and Pavlovian controller. I will suggest that an influence of the latter, particularly when its operation engenders an opposition to other controllers, provides a good low level explanation of what is often conceived as a high level problem. Finally, I will propose that some of the phenomena I describe captures core components of phenomena seen in psychopathology.

There will be a wine reception after the talk with the guest speaker.

Free for members, £2 for non-members