I come from a business psychology
background and I wanted to take a formal
approach in understanding how we make
decisions. 
 
I've always been interested in
people and human decision-making and
this course has been a natural
progression of my studies. 
 
So behavioural
economics in the world today is such a
growing field in the professional
industry. You need to look at why people
are choosing to make decisions that
doesn't just take an economic point of
view it also takes into account their
social well-being, their cognition, or who
they interact with. If they're making any
unhealthy decisions you can look at how
to influence their decisions to make
them better.
Psychology and economics as 
standalone subjects are fundamentally
different, it does address a lot of key
societal issues and I believe that
research in these areas would benefit
the society as well as the academic
institutions at large. 
 
Because the course
is split across both departments
everyone has a tutor from both economics
and psychology which means that whenever
you've got a question or when you're
discussing your projects you get inputs
from both departments. 
 
So it's really
good having leading researchers from
both the psychology and the economics
department both updating you in what
they're doing in terms of their research
and how each of their topics interact
with each other. You can see real world
applications that look to make people
make better decisions and to make the
world a better place for everyone. 
 
On the
course we've got a really good community
I think there's a lot of interaction
between people especially between the
people from different disciplines. There's
psychologists, economists, biologists,
physicists. Everyone brings something
different, everyone's got their own
perspectives on how to approach
the questions and the essays, and they bring in things that you might not
otherwise have considered.
 
We tend to have a very unique kind of
interaction because we all have
different knowledge bases and
especially when we talk about a single
topic we tend to have a lot of arguments
for and against. Our professors provide
the framework and we add colours to it.
The really good thing about this course
is that you get to learn about all sorts
of things you wouldn't otherwise have
learned about so you learn about
rational economic theory, cutting-edge
psychological theory, as well as some neuro
economics in there as well. We also
have a coding module which helped me to
learn coding which I've never done
before, which I think was really valuable
for me as well. So there is a
mathematical module and while it is
important for the overall course the
lecturers were really understanding if
you didn't have as much experience as
others and they put a lot of support
sessions and a lot of extra classes to
help you understand it at your level and
at your progress level as well. 
 
The course has a lot of applications
especially from a curious point of view.
I intend to become an entrepreneur and
in an entrepreneur's life we all tend to
make a lot of decisions almost on a day
to day basis and that's somewhere I
would say the course would perfectly fit
in. 
 
After the course I'm planning on
working in the civil service, I'm going
to be a social researcher. I think this
course is really going to have helped me
because I gained a really broad
understanding of what drives people's
behavior and as well the statistical
knowledge and the coding knowledge that
we gain is going to be really useful, so
I feel like I'm gonna have that edge
over someone else. 
 
If you're interested in human decision-making I definitely
encourage anyone to consider this
master's in applied psychology and
economic behaviour. 
 
You get to look at both the economic aspects of the
decision that they're making, and also
the psychological aspects that go into
why they're making that decision and as
a result of that you can look at how to
drive behavior change in a positive
direction.
 
