This is a graduate seminar for Ph.D. students interested in behavioral science. The course will be divided into two parts.
The first part (taught by Professor Levine) will focus on charitable giving and prosocial behavior. We will cover topics such as the psychology of (in)effective altruism, the role of emotion and reason in prosocial behavior, how people judge others' prosocial behavior, and how incentives influence prosocial behavior.
The second part (taught by Professor Fishbach) will focus on motivation science. We will cover topics such as goal setting, monitoring progress and feedback, pursuing multiple goals (including self-control conflict) and the role of social support in goal achievement.
Students are expected to read the assigned articles in advance, actively participate in class discussions, generate original research ideas, and, provide critical and constructive comments on classmates’ research ideas. The main purpose of this course is to stimulate research, and as part of this class you will be asked to develop two mini research projects that will be presented to class and submitted as short papers. One mini project should be related to the topics covered in the first half of the class and the second to the second half of the class. In each project you should propose an experiment (complete with details) that you could conduct.