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Approximately 2 billion people live in conflict-affected areas. Yet most of the theories, experiments, and interventions developed in behavioral science are based on stable contexts. Approximately 2 billion people live in conflict-affected areas. Yet most of the theories, experiments, and interventions developed in behavioral science are based on stable contexts. It’s time to stop treating conflict as an edge case.
The present hysteria is not a necessary or inevitable condition of life; it’s something we’ve chosen, if only by our acquiescence to it.
How our sense of human exceptionalism fosters a psychological detachment to the natural world that limits our science and diminishes our understanding of ourselves and other species.
When American author Edward Bellamy published his utopian novel Looking Backward: 2000 – 1887 in 1888, he didn’t know that it would be one of the best-selling books of the era; that it would inspire a political groups around the world; or that some of the most prominent intellectuals of the time would count it as an influence on their thinking.
How science can get it right and still miss the point.
The real work in deciding is not in the calculation, but all the thinking that surrounds it.
View all the sessions from Neuropaz 2026—an online event exploring the latest work and thinking at the intersection of behavioral science and peace and conflict. Plus, access additional resources from all of our speakers.
A half century of research on how people make decisions has shown that rational choice theory fails to describe how people do choose. Nevertheless, it has remained at the center of things, as the normative answer to questions about how people should choose.
The current political moment makes equity-grounded research harder. But that’s precisely the reason we need to keep doing it.
On Friday, February 6, join us for an online event exploring the latest work and thinking at the intersection of behavioral science and peace and conflict.
The theory that underpins much of decision-making science falls short as a way to think about how we actually make decisions and how decisions should be made.
