The investigators will combine approaches from economics, decision science, and cognitive neuroscience. The goal is to develop a system to measure how well different people reason in strategic social situations, and to explore how specific parts of the brain may be involved in strategic decision making.
The investigators plan to develop a measure to summarize how specific individuals perform in a set of strategic tasks conducted in a laboratory environment. They will administer these tasks -- eg, test "strategic IQ" --to individuals in separate groups with distinct characteristics. Three groups are made up of people who we might expect to be especially good at strategic thinking: mathematically gifted undergraduate students, students trained in the formal analysis of strategic thinking (game theory), and experienced business managers. The fifth group are individuals with specialized brain lesions that have specific and well-documented effects on cognition.
Data from all groups will be combined to test a new theory developed by two of the PIs about how people learn to think strategically. An additional study will involve only members of the fifth group. These individuals will also complete strategic tasks while undergoing fMRI brain imaging scans. The goal is to link evidence about the "games" that these participants play poorly with evidence from brain images, to link specific kinds of errors to specific brain circuits.
