Laurier's Hunsberger Lecture to explore Goal pursuit, productivity, and self-control in the lab and real life

Goal pursuit, productivity, and self-control in the lab and real life

Dr. Cendri Hutcherson is the Director of the Toronto Decision Neuroscience Laboratory and an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada Research Chair in Decision Neuroscience.

Abstract:

People sometimes succeed, and often fail, to accomplish what they set out to do. What underlies successful vs. failed goal pursuit? Here, I discuss a number of lines of work from my lab showing how a neurally-informed computational approach can be used to understand a variety of phenomena related to self-control in both laboratory contexts and in real-world behaviors. First, I discuss how this framework can be used to understand not only why some choices (e.g. eating healthy, choosing generously) can feel so difficult, but also how we might make them easier.  Next, I will outline more recent work in which we apply the same approach toward modeling fluctuations in daily cognitive and motivational states to understand why it can sometimes feel so difficult to accomplish our goals in daily life. In both cases, our results point to a novel understanding of the importance of trait and state factors shaping the accuracy of evidence accumulation during decision making.

Friday, March 7, 2025

3:30 – 5:00 p.m.

Senate & Board Chambers