Behavioral Decision Analytics Based on Subjective Happiness

Can more money buy you more happiness? What determines your happiness and how feeling (un)happy affects your behaviors of decision-making? This talk will focus on these puzzles. I start from the unique perspective of subjective happiness that bridges the interpersonal environment and individual decision-makings. I explore the causes of subjective happiness in interpersonal comparisons, as well as individual beliefs and group behaviors that use subjective happiness as an incentive. I adopt the quantitative approach to construct a theoretical framework of happiness based on utility function. Therein, I use rich emotional state functions to capture people's mental changes in interpersonal environments, characterize and interpret individual behavioral patterns and individual-to-group evolutions. I explore the causal chain of "Social Comparisons - Subjective Happiness - Individual Beliefs - Group Behaviors - Coping Strategies" from a theoretical perspective. More relative topics might be discussed in this talk, for example, how moral sentiments, confidence and stress affects individual behaviors of decision-making, and affective computing in behavioral decision analytics.

Junyi Chai is currently an Associate Professor, with Faculty of Business and Management, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University (BNU-HKBU) United International College, and a Senior Member of the IEEE. He received his PhD from Department of Computing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2013. His main research interests include decision theory and applications, behavioral decision making, e-business and information management, and affective computing. His research appears in interdisciplinary journals such as Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Operational Research, Plos ONE, Journal of Happiness Studies, Journal of Mathematical Psychology, International Journal of Production Economics, among more than 30 international journals. He has secured various competitive fundings from National Natural Science Foundation of China or of Guangdong Province.