Cognitive Biases: Mental Accounting

The psychologist Laurie Santos (Yale University) explains the phenomenon of mental accounting: why we don’t always assume that money is fungible. She explores why we set up different accounts for different purchases and how we can use our mental accounting biases to be happier about our financial decisions.

Chandrika and Ranjan Tandon Professor of Psychology, and Head of Silliman College | Host of The Happiness Lab podcast at Yale University

Our research explores an age-old question: what makes the human mind unique? We test this question by studying the cognitive capacities of non-human animals. By comparing the cognitive abilities of non-human animals to those of humans, we can determine which domains of knowledge are unique to the human mind. At the Canine and Primate Laboratory (aka CapLab), we study the origins of human cognition by focusing on two different groups of non-human animals.

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