Public Lecture Series: Eyal Winter (Hebrew University) | Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

"It is that rare book that a casual reader could open at a random page and expect to find something interesting…For the casual reader, Feeling Smart is a fascinating…romp through the positive ways that emotions can shape our actions. It is also a helpful balm for those who worry that their emotions occasionally over-run their 'higher faculties'." Financial Times

Drawing on original research, especially relying on laboratory experiments of game theory and decision-making, Winter explains:

* How unfair treatment does make us sick: it provokes activity in the brain in areas associated with disgust and the vomit reflex

* Why there is strength in numbers: how collective emotions and group cohesion enable individuals to improve their material conditions and bolster their chances of survival

* Gender differences, such as why men are more group-oriented and geared toward collective emotions (ie, sports fandom, nationalism) than women

* Why blushing makes your mistakes and faults more socially acceptable

* How we create emotional rules to guide our interactions with others, such as the desire for revenge or for punishment when someone has treated us unfairly, or maintaining a sense of honor in the face of perceived insult.

* Why ethnic diversity in a neighborhood leads to a drop in charitable giving

* Why bravado isn’t always a bad thing: we overestimate our abilities by primarily remembering our “wins” rather than “fails,” but why this overconfidence raises our “market value” in social situations

* How herd behavior can lead large numbers of individuals all to make the same irrational mistake

On April 18th Wednesday, professor Eyal Winter (Hebrew U.) will give a public lecture on the theme of his 2014 book "Feeling Smart: Why Our Emotions are More Rational Than We Think". The book has recently been translated to Turkish. Below, please find a link to the book's webpage:

http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~mseyal/books.php

As the title suggests, Prof. Winter explores in this public lecture the role of emotions in decision making. The topic should be of interest to students from a wide range of disciplines interested in decision making and emotions.

Professor Winter has given versions of this lecture in many respectable institutions such as NYU, Oxford U, IMF, and Worldbank to name a few.

Eyal Winter's Short Bio

Eyal Winter is the Silverzweig Professor of Economics at the Hebrew. He is specializing in behavioral economics, Decision Making and in Game Theory. He is a member of the Center for the Study of Rationality and headed the center for four years. Winter was awarded the Humboldt Prize for excellence in research by the German government in 2011. He is an elected council member of the International Game Theory Society, and an elected fellow of the Economic Theory Society. Winter held senior positions at Washington University and the European University Institute. His book "Feeling Smart: Why our Emotions are More Rational than We Think" appeared in 2015. The book was endorsed by seven Nobel laureates, and will also appear in German, French, Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and Turkish. His papers appeared in Econometrica, AER, Review of Economics Studies, APSR, JET, Management Science, Psy Science and more. His press essays appeared in Time Magazine, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Guardian, the Independent, Jewish Chronicle, Haaretz and more. He has advised governments and corporations on behavioral economics and decision making.