I started this site to track my research and to document my venture into a new area of interest – Behavioral Economics or what some were calling Market Psychology and appears to be based in traditional psychology’s cognitive decision-making. Cognitive decision-making was a big part of my Ph.D. in Applied and Experimental Human Factors and Cognitive Psychology.

My research has focused on the process from attention (psychophysics) and perception (sensory) to decision-making (cognitive processes) and response (behaviour).

• What gets people’s attention and how can we direct their attention?
• How do people perceive information and what influences their perception? Such as, their experiences, biological influences, motivation, or emotions.
• What decision-making process follows?
• And what is the ultimate response or behavior? Is it predictable?

My interest in behavioral economics began with Daniel Kahneman. As is probably the case for many people. Daniel Kahneman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, as a psychologist, for his work in behavioral economics. The application of psychology to economics is utilized globally. Often to try to motivate people to do what’s best for themselves, such as, saving for retirement. That knowledge in combination with understanding the underlying processes of attention, perception, decision-making, and response can also be applied to situations such as getting people to participate in life saving medical screenings.

For anyone who is interested, I have also searched the topic through the American Psychological Association’s website which led me to Market Psychologist, Richard Peterson, MD – a psychiatrist who founded MarketPsych and has written several books on the subject. I also found several good books related to the topic on Amazon: “Well-Being: Foundations of Hedonic Psychology” (2003) by Daniel Kahneman; “The Joyless Economy: The Psychology of Human Satisfaction” (1992) by Tibor Scitovsky (original 1976?); “Choices, Values, and Frames” (kindle version – the hard covers are crazy expensive, over $800.00) by Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky; “Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics” (2015) by Richard H. Thaler; “The Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis” (2016 – only one review is odd ) by Sanjit Dhami; “Behavioral Economics (Routledge Advanced Texts in Economics and Finance)” 2nd Edition (2011) by Edward Cartwrigh.