Neal Hinvest

I work within the field of neuroeconomics, a highly interdisciplinary field bringing together psychology, economics and cognitive neuroscience.

My work explores the types of decisions that we commonly make, typically financial decisions, and understanding the conscious and unconscious psychological mechanisms that are involved in the choice (e.g. influence of unconscious emotions). I commonly measure brain activation or psychophysiolgical signals to provide insight into these psychological mechanisms (e.g. EEG, eye-tracking, heart rate and galvanic skin response). I then integrate, and improve upon, predictive theories of decision-making from economics to allow us to try to predict how individuals or groups will decide.

I work with other Academics from the fields of business, management and economics. I also, commonly, work with practitioners to apply my findings directly to a wide range of organisations.

My teaching resides predominantly within the field of neuroeconomics.

We have a new MSc in Applied Psychology and Economic Behaviour that I am heavily involved in. This MSc provides students with a fantastic opportunity to develop a truly interdiscipinary perspective and understanding of how human beings make decisions and how we can develop predictive models of behaviour. Such an understanding can be extremely valuable and sought after by empoyers in field such as policy development and deployment, consumer psychology, HR, healthcare, risk management and beyond.

For more details on the MSc Applied Psychology and Economic Behaviour see http://www.bath.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate-2018/taught-postgraduate-courses/msc-applied-psychology-and-economic-behaviour

I welcome applications from any student engaged in developing further insight and creating new understanding and applications in the science of human decision-making. More specifically, you should be interested in adult healthy decision-making, commonly involving a financial component.

For example, previous PhD projects of mine have explored changes in metacognition over adult aging and how this impacts upon investment choices; the effect of unconscious arousal on trading behaviour; an EEG investigation of the mere social exposure effect and the psychology of project entrapment.