PLEXUS Second Intensive Course

In the last quarter of the 20th century, the discipline of economics suffered a profound change when psychologists intervened in microeconomics. Classically, the agent of economic decisions was considered purely rational and cold-blooded, with the single goal of maximizing utility. Researchers like Kahneman, Tversky, Thaler, and Ariely experimentally showed that such an agent does not exist in real life: they are 'econs' instead of humans. This was the dawn of behavioral economics, an exciting field that exposed the biases and limitations of humans when making decisions. In this short course, we will outline behavioral economics' history and main findings, posing the provocative question of whether logic could also benefit from assuming that logical reasoning is not carried out by perfectly rational agents in real life but by mere humans. Is it time for the birth of "behavioral logic"? The second session of the course will focus on the process of developing tools to assess human behavior. At this point, mathematics and statistics enter a fruitful dialogue with psychology, aimed at designing instruments that scientifically measure a behavioral characteristic (namely construct) with the highest accuracy and validity. Overall, the main goal of the course is to show experts in logic the potentialities of psychology to assess logical reasoning in actual human beings.