School of Finance and Management seminar series: Prof Bence Nanay on against the myth of rationality

Prof. Bence Nanay (University of Antwerp, Department of Philosophy, Centre for Philosophical Psychology), made a presentation on “Unstable preferences, decision-making and the attention economy: Against the myth of rationality” at the SFM research seminar series on 23 January 2023.

The presentation offered a critique to the assumption, held in a variety of disciplines, very much including finance and management, that our economic and other behaviour can and should be explained in terms of stable preferences and rational reasoning about them. Current findings in cognitive science show that this is very far from the truth. Much of our (economic) behaviour is explained by less intellectual mental processes, such as attention, imagination and emotions. Prof, Nanay gave three case studies of this: (1) the evidence of how our preferences are fickle, unstable and manipulable, (2) the importance of imagination and emotions in decision-making and (3) the attention-economy and the attention deficit that underlies it.