Drazen Prelec

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Drazen Prelec

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Affiliated MIT Sloan Group

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Drazen Prelec is the Digital Equipment Corp. Leaders for Global Operations Professor of Management and a Professor of Management Science and Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Prelec holds appointments in the Department of Economics and in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. His research deals with the psychology and neuroscience of decision-making, including behavioral economics and neuroeconomics, risky choice, time discounting, self-control, and consumer behavior. He works on both the development of normative decision theory and the exploration of the empirical failures of that theory, using behavioral and fMRI methods. A current project on “self-signaling” tries to understand the strange power of non-causal motivation—when individuals favor actions that are diagnostic of good outcomes, even though these actions have little or no causal force. Diagnostic motivation is real, and is probably essential for human self-control. Its cognitive and neural mechanisms are not well understood, however. A second “Bayesian truth serum” project deals with scoring systems for evaluating individual and collective judgment in knowledge domains where no external truth criterion is available. Examples would be long-range forecasts, political or historical inferences, and artistic or legal interpretations. Prelece is developing scoring systems that reward honest judgments and that can identify truth even when majority opinion is wrong.

He was a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, and has received a number of distinguished research awards, including the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Prelec holds an AB in applied mathematics from Harvard College and a PhD in experimental psychology from Harvard University.

Publications

"Beta-delta or Delta-tau? A Reformulation of Quasi-hyperbolic Discounting."

Bleichrodt, Han, Rogier J. D. Potter van Loon, and Drazen Prelec. Management Science Vol. 68, No. 8 (2022): 6326-6335.

"Do Not Tell Me More; You Are Honest: A Preconceived Honesty Bias."

Pascual-Ezama, David, Adrián Muñoz, and Dražen Prelec. Frontiers in Psychology Vol. 12, (2021): 693942. Supplemental Material. Download Paper.

"Predicted Preference Conjoint Analysis."

Radas, Sonja, and Dražen Prelec. PLoS ONE Vol. 16, No. 8 (2021): e0256010. Download Paper.

"Human Social Sensing is an Untapped Resource for Social Sciences."

Galesic, Mirta, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, Jonas Dalege, Scott L. Feld, Frauke Kreuter, Henrik Olsson, Dražen Prelec, Daniel L. Stein, and Tamara van der Does. Nature Vol. 591, No. 7866 (2021): 214-222.

"What Makes Dynamic Strategic Problems Difficult? Evidence from an Experimental Study."

Rahmandad, Hazhir, Jerker Denrell, and Dražen Prelec. Strategic Management Journal Vol. 42, No. 5 (2021): 865-897.

"Neural Mechanisms of Credit Card Spending."

Banker, Sachin, Derek Dunfield, Alex Huang, and Dražen Prelec. Scientific Reports Vol. 11, (2021): 4070.

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