Jon Bendor's Ph.D. seminar on behavioral political economy, Stanford GSB, Spring quarter (PE660)

 Professor Jonathan Bendor is teaching PE660 (Spring 2023), his phd seminar on behavioral political economy in the Spring quarter.  He writes that it is "basically an introduction to the cognitive sciences for social science phd students."  And he's not planning to teach it next year, so if you're planning to take it, now is the time.

The introduction to his syllabus is worth quoting:

"This course studies the cognitive scientific foundations of political economy. It builds on the explosion of research in cognitive psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and allied fields over the last few decades to provide perspectives on political beliefs and behavior that are not tweaks on theories of complete rationality; they are distinct ideas with their own premises of how humans think, plan, and decide.  These premises do not posit that we are irrational.  Such claims are wildly off the mark; they cannot explain how we have become the dominant species on this planet.  Instead, they describe a clever but computationally constrained primate whose evolution, cultural as well as biological, has produced a characteristic configuration of mental software and external symbol systems (writing, numbers). The representational and computational capacities of this software and these symbol systems, combined with our unusual ability to cooperate with unrelated strangers, has in a remarkably short time produced massive knowledge-intensive political institutions that can deploy nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and can use epidemiology and molecular genetics to combat epidemics.  Such achievements warrant explanations.

"In short, we are boundedly rational, but that’s only half the story; we’re also really really clever problem-solvers. This course explores theories that explain both halves in a relatively unified way.  

"Course Requirements

"The main requirement is a commitment to a mindset. You will get much more out of the course if you explicitly commit yourself to taking the ideas on their own terms.  If you consciously or unconsciously try to assimilate them as minor modifications of expected utility theory or noncooperative game theory you’ll be depriving yourself of valuable cognitive diversity. 

"What I’m asking you to do isn’t easy. It is natural in this context to try to assimilate new ideas by reinterpreting them as minor modifications of the familiar.  I want you to exert conscious effort to fight this tendency. The brain/mind of homo sapiens is arguably the most complex object on Earth and our behavior is sometimes correspondingly complex. Like all social scientists, political economists need all the help we can get in trying to understand this extraordinary species. So do yourself a favor and expand your mental repertoire.  When you read Kahneman’s Thinking: Fast and Slow or Henrich’s The Secret of Our Success, try to think like a cognitive/social psychologist or an evolutionary anthropologist, respectively.  During class discussions try to help others do the same. "

Here's the reading list:

Daniel Kahneman.  THINKING, FAST AND SLOW (2011).

Joseph Henrich.  THE SECRET OF OUR SUCCESS: HOW CULTURE IS DRIVING HUMAN EVOLUTION, DOMESTICATING OUR SPECIES, AND MAKING US SMART (2016).

Sloman, S. & P. Fernbach.  THE KNOWLEDGE ILLUSION: WHY WE NEVER THINK ALONE (2018).

Richard Nelson and Sidney Winter.  AN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF ECONOMIC CHANGE (1982).

Joshua Greene.  MORAL TRIBES: EMOTION, REASON, AND THE GAP BETWEEN US AND THEM (2013).

J. Bendor, D. Diermeier, D. Siegel, and M. Ting.  A BEHAVIORAL THEORY OF ELECTIONS (2011).

Robert McCauley. WHY RELIGION IS NATURAL AND SCIENCE IS NOT (2011).