Rational decision-making

Liberal democracies and free markets hinge on the assumption that people are rational actors – yet we are only just beginning to understand how our fallible brains make voting, judgment, consumer and policy choices that set the directions of individuals and societies. Hauke Heekeren discussed how neuroscientific tools help us understand how we learn and assess the value of decision options, how we deliberate and how we choose.

Hauke Heekeren, Freie Universität Berlin

Hauke is a professor of biological psychology and cognitive neuroscience and dean of the Department of Education and Psychology at Freie Universität Berlin. His primary research interests concern perceptual decision making, the roles of motivation and affect in decision making, and cognitive and affective components in normal and disturbed social cognition.