Prof Saadi Lahlou 

Dr Frédéric Basso 

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Psychology of Economic Life. This course is not available as an outside option.

This course explores new ways of crafting sustainable Production-Consumption Systems, and managing the transition from the current state to a more sustainable one, taking into account actual human beings (Homo Sapiens) rather than Homo Economicus. This endeavour is informed by a realistic psychology, with a critical but practical, societal approach and concrete application to real cases to move from an economic to an eco-systemic perspective.

We consider Homo Sapiens with its rationality, but also with its embodied, emotional, social and cultural dimensions as well as the cognitive characteristics and drives inherited from evolution, in order to explain the social-psychological aspects of economic phenomena. Furthermore, our framework recognises the importance of context and socio-technical constraints, as well as societal regulation.

Students are provided with a solid critical history of thought through the analysis of the concepts of great thinkers, updated with recent literature from a multidisciplinary perspective. They will use the content of the course to address a contemporary issue. They will also be provided with a framework, Installation Theory, to analyse and channel actual behaviour to become the changemakers needed to contribute to the societal transformation. Finally, they apply the skills they have learnt in the course, by working in groups, to make real cases of economic life more sustainable.

Framed by our distinctive societal approach to economic and environmental psychology, articulating history of thought and contemporary analyses, this course trains students to enable and support positive behaviour change in settings characterised by cultural diversity, a need for sustainability and alternative models of growth.

AT: 20 hours of lectures; 20 hours of seminars. WT: 6 hours of lectures; 12 hours of seminars 

Students will also be required to attend a lecture series focusing on marginalised voices in psychological and behavioural science (total of 15 hours taking place in AT and WT).

Students will be expected to produce one mini-essay and one oral presentation that precedes each summative.

There is no single text for PB403 but one may find the following texts useful.

• Basso, F., & Herrmann-Pillath, C. (2024). Embodiment, Political Economy and Human Flourishing: An Embodied Cognition Approach to Economic Life (1st ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
• Basso, F., & Krpan, D. (2023). The WISER framework of behavioural change interventions for mindful human flourishing. The Lancet Planetary Health, 7(2), e106-e108.
• Lahlou, S. (2017) Installation Theory. The Societal Construction and Regulation of Individual Behaviour. Cambridge University Press.
• Lahlou, S. (2024). Why People Do what They Do. And How to Make Them Change. Polity.

Additional references:

• Davis, J. B. (2010). Individuals and identity in economics. Cambridge University Press.
• Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Penguin Books.
• Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Doubleday Anchor books.
• Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. Penguin UK.
• Herrmann-Pillath, C., & Hederer, C. (2022). A New Principles of Economics: The Science of Markets. Taylor & Francis.
• Hickel, J. (2020). Less is more: How degrowth will save the world. Random House.
• Himmelweit, H. T. & Gaskell G. (1990). Societal Psychology. Sage Publications, Inc.
• Johansson, T. (2000). Social Psychology and Modernity. Oxford University Press.
• Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Laland, K. N., & Brown, G. R. (2011). Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour. Oxford University Press.
• Lewis, A. (Ed.). (2008). The Cambridge Handbook of Psychology and Economic Behaviour. Cambridge University Press.
• Lewis, A., Webley, P., & Furnham, A. (1995). The New Economic Mind. Harvester/ Wheatsheaf Books.
• Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, Self & Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist. The University of Chicago press.
• Nelson, J. A. (2018). Economics for humans. University of Chicago Press.
• Raworth, K. (2017). Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist. Chelsea Green Publishing.
• Stafford, C. (2020). Economic life in the real world: logic, emotion and ethics. Cambridge University Press.
• Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. (2008). Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Yale University Press.
• Tukker, A., Emmert, S., Charter, M., Vezzoli, C., Sto, E., Andersen, M. M., ... & Lahlou, S. (2008). Fostering change to sustainable consumption and production: an evidence based view. Journal of Cleaner Production, 16(11), 1218-1225.
• Webley, P., Burgoyne, C., Lea, S., & Young, B. (2001). The Economic Psychology of Everyday Life. Psychology Press.

Essay (50%, 2000 words) in the AT.
Essay (50%, 5000 words) in the WT.

The 2000-word PB403 essay is an individual essay which will be marked separately. The 5000-word PB403 essay is written in groups, which will be marked collectively, with an individual modulation reflecting respective contribution to the group work.