MBB Lunch Series

People Make the Same Bayesian Judgment They Criticize in Others
Jack Cao
Graduate Student, Psychology

When two individuals from different social groups exhibit identical behavior, egalitarian codes of conduct call for equal judgments of both individuals. However, this moral imperative is at odds with the statistical imperative to consider priors based on group membership: insofar as these priors differ, Bayesian rationality calls for unequal judgments of both individuals. We show that participants criticized the morality and intellect of someone else who made a Bayesian judgment, shared less money with this person, and incurred financial costs to punish this person. However, participants made unequal judgments as a Bayesian statistician would, thereby rendering the same judgment that they found repugnant when offered by someone else. This inconsistency, which can be reconciled by differences in which base rate is attended to, suggests that participants use group membership in a way that reflects the savvy of a Bayesian and the disrepute of someone they consider to be a bigot.

Explanatory Challenges to Revealed Preference Approaches
Kate Vredenburgh
Graduate Student, Philosophy

My MBB funded research examines explanatory challenges to revealed preference approaches, or a set of rational choice frameworks that interpret the concept of “preference” entirely in behavioral terms. I defend revealed preference approaches against these widely accepted explanatory criticisms. The motivating idea behind this defense is that scientists sometimes seek highly abstract generalizations, which leave out details of particular processes that determine the behavior of interest. These highly abstract generalizations often serve epistemic and practical functions: they help scientists to unify the behavior of seemingly different systems, and to learn facts about the causal structure of a system that are not as readily apparent from a more detailed perspective.

The MBB Lunch Series is free and open to the Harvard community. For planning purposes, please RSVP.