28-30 May 2009, Workshop "Preference Change", London, U.K.

Preference change is a phenomenon that everyone experiences in himself or herself. Such change can be gradual or radical, expected or surprising, caused by external experiences (such as encountering another culture) or by internal influences (such as aging), and so on. How should preference change be explained and modelled? This is a methodological question of tremendous importance, with repercussions in various areas such as dynamic decision theory, welfare economics, consumer theory, moral psychology, philosophy of mind, political science, and the study of deliberation. Yet the question is far from settled, and a science of preference change, if it exists at all at this point, is certainly in its infancy. To mention only one point of disagreement, standard rational choice models explain every preference change by an underlying belief change, whereas critics reject this reduction. The aim of this workshop is to bring together different researchers with interests in this area and to discuss fresh perspectives.

For more information, see http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/CPNSS/projects/ChoiceGroup/PreferenceChange.htm