EU gives maximum score to research project involving Erasmus Behavioural Lab
In the context of its 7th Framework Programme for Research & Development (FP7) the European Union has granted nearly € 350,000 to the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University for its planned contribution to xDelia. xDelia, which stands for “Excellence in Decision-making through Enhanced Learning in Immersive Applications”, is an EU-funded project that investigates the role of behavioural biases and emotions in professional financial trading, private investment, and personal finance. The project, guided by Prof. dr. ir. Ale Smidts as the principal researcher, also develops sensor and serious game technologies to support non-formal learning in building financial competence and expertise. It contributes to the earlier mentioned European project by its knowledge about neuroscience, available at the Erasmus Center for Neuroeconomics and at the related facilities at the Erasmus Behavioural Lab.
<link people ale-smidts _blank>Prof. dr. ir. Ale Smidts comments: “The xDelia project will enhance our understanding of judgmental biases and emotion regulation in novice as well as expert financial decision makers. It will build on our studies of the neural processes underlying risky financial choices. In the behavioural lab we will provide feedback on emotions to test their effect on decision making. We are particularly keen to understand how such feedback supports the learning process of regulating emotions and reducing the impact of decision-biases. The project is an exciting opportunity to work with scholars from such diverse fields of expertise towards understanding competence in financial decision making.”
Everybody will agree that simulators for pilots make sense, because pilot errors can lead to disaster. However, errors made by financial traders and private investors can lead to disaster too, but so far no one really considered developing simulators for this group. Such “serious games” can emulate the challenges financial decision makers face during an ordinary day at the office. Not so much to test how much they remember of their college text books about risk and returns, and about more intricate details of financial engineering, but especially to detect the influence of emotion in financial decision making. Emotions are not always bad, but almost always they play an important role in the decisions. Of course, experienced traders know this and they check the behaviour of the rookies accordingly. They look over their shoulders and discuss their decisions with them during the day, including an assessment of their more emotional moves. But until now, no one really considered developing an integrated simulator - a tool that checks blood(pressure), sweat and tears and that can be related to brain activity.
xDelia received the maximum score from the EU evaluators. The project will receive a total grant of € 3,2 million to make steps towards more advanced technology enhanced learning in this sector. The consortium project is lead by CIMNE, a centre for Numerical Methods that is part of the TU of Catalunya in Barcelona. Amongst the other six participants in the consortium are the Forschungszentrum Informatik (FZI) - a large institute in Karlsruhe specialised in the development of modern information technology for enterprises; the learning technology unit of the Open University in the UK; a global investment bank, and a university department from Sweden with substantial experience in the development of serious computer games. xDelia has started recently and will finish in 3 years.
More Information
<link erim research centres erasmus_centre_for_neuroeconomics _blank>Erasmus Centre for Neuroeconomics
