Erasmus Centre for Neuroeconomics

Every day we have the opportunity to lie, cheat and be dishonest for personal gain. Alternatively, we can choose to be a ‘good person’ and uphold our positive moral self-image. It is generally assumed that our cognitive control or ‘willpower’ steers people away from immoral decisions.

But according to new research from PhD candidate Sebastian Speer, Professor Ale Smidts and Dr Maarten Boksem of Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM), cognitive control does not serve the same purpose for everyone. In fact, this control actually enables cheating for people who are usually honest, while it facilitates honest decisions for cheaters.

At the Erasmus Center for Neuroeconomics we seek outstanding applicants whose research interests lie at the intersection of psychology, economics, marketing and neuroscience and who are interested in studying the brain mechanisms that underlie judgement and decision-making. Particular interests of our group are the neural underpinnings of persuasive messaging, social influences on choice, the role of affect in decision-making and (dis)honesty. In particular, we focus on linking neural measures obtained from individuals to real market-level choice data. However, candidates have a large say in the precise focus of their project.

In her dissertation 'Context Dependent Valuation. A neuroscientific perspective on consumer decision-making’, Linda Couwenberg takes an interdisciplinary approach to study how different types of contextual information can increase the desirability of anticipated outcomes and thereby influence common, everyday, consumer behaviors.

Hang-Yee Chan was awarded a doctorate with the distinction cum laude for his dissertation 'Decoding the consumer’s brain: Neural representations of consumer experience’. Hang-Yee studies on consumer experience – what consumers think about brands, how they feel about services, whether they like certain products – is crucial to marketing practitioners.

In her dissertation 'Emotional Experience and Advertising Effectiveness: On the use of EEG in marketing’ Esther Eijlers extends existing knowledge by elucidating two proposed aims of neuromarketing, using EEG: offering additional insight into implicit processes (here, emotions) and contributing to predicting behavioral, market level, responses or ‘advertising effectiveness’.