Drazen Prelec – “Behavioral and Brain Mechanisms of Self-Signaling”

Decisions often reveal something about of one’s preferences, to others but also to oneself. After the fact, this can be a source of pleasure or pain; before the fact, anticipation of these feelings can influence what one chooses to do. Such self-signaling of internal characteristics through actions is probably unique to humans, and is implicated in both self-control and in the maintenance of social norms. It also presents a challenge to economic and philosophical conceptions of rational action. This talk will briefly discuss theoretical approaches to self-signaling, and then turn to some recent behavioral and neuroimaging results obtained in the MIT Neuroeconomics lab.