Temptation and Related Concepts

该奖项将为微观经济理论研究提供资金。这项研究完成了PI关于诱惑和自我控制主题的早期工作，并将其扩展到重要的新方向。两个主要的新方向是考虑内疚/善良和诱惑的非线性效应。内疚，与屈服于诱惑有关的无益，在诱惑的背景下是一个自然的问题，但以前没有被正式确定。善良指的是内疚的镜像，抵制诱惑的自豪感。要考虑的非线性效应涉及诱惑的程度对诱惑是否与代理人有关的情况。例如，也许低水平的诱惑被完全忽视，而适度的诱惑则完全改变了决策者所感知的选择问题。最后，PI将在新的方向上使用在此背景下开发的工具。首先，将该模型适应于多个代理，提供了一种思考控制权的价值以及代理如何看待彼此的方式。特别是，这为考虑利他主义提供了一种自然的语言，例如，父亲可能更喜欢让儿子自己做决定。其次，该模型自然会考虑到其他原因，比如从菜单中选择时的计算成本，或者与没有从菜单中“正确”选择相关的遗憾。更大的选择集可能更糟糕。广泛的影响包括资助研究生研究。提出的许多方向导致研究超越传统经济学的边界，因此，可能导致富有成效的跨学科工作。例如，在考虑内疚等话题时，寻求心理学家的意见并与其合作是很自然的。

The award will fund research in microeconomic theory. This research completes earlier work by the PI on the subject of temptation and self-control and extends it in important new directions. The two main new directions are to consider guilt/virtuousness and nonlinear effects of temptation. Guilt, disutility associated with succumbing to temptation, is a natural issue in the context of temptation but has not been previously formalized. Virtuousness refers to the mirror image of guilt, feelings of pride in resisting temptation. The nonlinear effects to be considered concern situations where the level of temptation has a signi.cant e.ect on whether temptation is relevant to the agent. For example, perhaps a low level of temptation is entirely ignored, while a moderate degree of temptation entirely changes the choice problem as perceived by the decision maker.Finally, the PI will use the tools developed in this context in new directions. First, adapting the model to multiple agents gives a way of thinking about the value of control rights and how agents view one another. In particular, this gives a naturallanguage for considering altruism where, for example, a father may prefer letting his son make his own decisions. Second, the model lends itself naturally to considering other reasons why larger choice sets may be worse such a computational costs in choosing from a menu or regrets associated with not choosing "correctly" from the menu.Broader impacts include funding graduate student research. Many of the directions proposed lead to research outside the traditional boundaries of economics and, consequently, may lead to fruitful interdisciplinary work. For example, it is natural to seek input from and collaboration with psychologists in considering such topics as guilt.