215 - Phd study

Plotting 10 possibilities.

To visualize the different outcomes for your PhD journey, you could create a decision tree or a scenario map that includes various possibilities based on different choices and external factors. Here are 10 potential outcomes you could plot:

1. **Successful Completion with Distinction**: Achieving exceptional results and possibly publishing influential papers.

2. **Successful Completion**: Meeting all the requirements, completing your dissertation, and graduating on time.

3. **Completion with Minor Revisions**: Successfully defending your thesis but having to make some minor revisions based on feedback.

4. **Completion with Major Revisions**: Completing the degree but having to undertake significant revisions to your dissertation after defense.

5. **Extended Timeline**: Completing your PhD but taking longer than initially planned due to various delays (e.g., research complexity, personal issues).

6. **Shift to a Different Focus**: Changing your research focus midway due to evolving interests or findings, leading to a delayed but successful completion.

7. **Transfer to Another Program**: Deciding that a different PhD program or institution better suits your needs and transferring, which may delay completion but ultimately leads to success.

8. **Stagnation**: Experiencing a prolonged period without significant progress, risking your ability to complete.

9. **Withdrawal with a Master's Degree**: Choosing to leave the PhD program with a terminal master's degree after determining that completing the PhD isn't the right path for you.

10. **Failure to Complete**: Facing insurmountable obstacles that prevent you from completing the PhD, such as unresolved academic issues, lack of funding, or loss of motivation.

For each scenario, you could further explore what factors might lead to that outcome, such as personal decisions, advisor relationships, funding, research progress, and external life events. By plotting these scenarios, you can better prepare for and navigate the challenges and decisions of your PhD journey.

Other factors.

Given the complexity of your situation and the new factors you've mentioned, here are 10 possible scenarios for your PhD journey, taking into account the changes in supervision, financial constraints, topic restrictions, and your personal resolve:

1. **Change Research Topic**: You might find a new topic that aligns better with the interests of your new supervisor and is more acceptable to the university's standards, leading to a smoother PhD journey and eventual completion.

2. **Negotiate Topic Adjustments**: Work with your new supervisor to adjust your original topic to skirt sensitive issues while still engaging with aspects of economic theory or practice that interest you, leading to successful completion.

3. **Seek External Mentorship**: Since your new supervisor is not in your area of interest, seeking guidance from an external mentor who is an expert in your original topic could provide support and insights necessary to continue your research as planned.

4. **Pursue Independent Study**: Continue your research independently, minimizing input from your supervisors, which could either lead to a groundbreaking dissertation or possible isolation and lack of academic support.

5. **Transfer to Another Institution**: Consider transferring to a different university where your original topic and research interests are supported, which could delay your graduation but ultimately result in a more satisfying academic outcome.

6. **Downscale the Scope**: Reduce the scope of your research to focus on a less controversial aspect of the banking sector, thus avoiding direct confrontation with the 'invisible hand' issue, possibly leading to successful completion with compromises.

7. **Acquire Additional Funding**: Address your financial constraints by applying for grants, fellowships, or part-time work within academia that aligns with your expertise, alleviating financial stress and allowing you to focus more on your studies.

8. **Mental Health and Resilience Building**: Engage in regular counseling or therapy sessions and resilience-building activities to maintain your mental health and motivation, which are crucial for overcoming the challenges in your PhD.

9. **Interdisciplinary Approach**: Combine elements from another discipline that might offer a fresh perspective to your work and make it more palatable to your new supervisor and the academic community, potentially leading to successful and novel outcomes.

10. **Exit with a Master's Degree**: If the constraints become too overbearing and no feasible solutions can align your interests with the new academic environment, consider exiting the program with a Master's degree, which still recognizes your effort and scholarly work without further financial and mental strain.

Each of these scenarios can play out differently based on how proactive and flexible you can be in navigating academic politics, financial issues, supervision changes, and personal dedication to your research goals.

Model

It sounds like you're interested in exploring the psychology of decision-making as it relates to banking and customer interactions. Specifically, you're noting that many customers come to the bank with pre-formed decisions and seek confirmation rather than advice, which can influence how banking services are delivered and how effective those interactions are.

Here are some points and concepts that could help you elaborate on this topic:

1. **Confirmation Bias**: This is a core concept where individuals favor information that confirms their pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses, regardless of whether the information is true. In a banking context, customers may only seek out or give weight to banking advice that aligns with their initial decisions, ignoring advice that contradicts their plans.

2. **Cognitive Dissonance**: This psychological theory suggests that people experience discomfort when their beliefs or decisions are challenged. Bank customers might feel uneasy when presented with financial advice that conflicts with their predetermined choices, which can impact how they receive and act on that advice.

3. **Heuristics in Decision-Making**: Customers often use simple, efficient rules (heuristics) to make decisions quickly. These rules can lead to biases. For example, a customer might always choose the same type of investment product because it's familiar, not necessarily because it's the best choice.

4. **Role of Emotion in Financial Decisions**: Emotions significantly influence financial decisions. Customers might choose financial products based on feelings of trust, fear, or excitement, which they then look to the bank to validate.

5. **Risk Tolerance and Perception**: Customers' inherent risk tolerance can dictate their financial decisions. They might seek confirmation from the bank that their choices are 'safe' according to their personal risk assessment.

6. **Impact of Social Influence**: Decisions can be heavily influenced by what customers believe is the norm or by what they think respected others (family, friends, or even media) suggest is correct. They might come to the bank seeking validation that their choices align with these social norms.

7. **Educational Interventions**: Considering these biases and decision-making processes, banks have an opportunity to educate their clients, not just sell products. This could involve helping customers understand their own biases and providing tools to make more informed decisions.

8. **Personalized Financial Services**: Banks can use the understanding of pre-decision biases to tailor their services more effectively to individual needs, offering a more consultative approach that anticipates the need for validation and works constructively within that framework.

9. **Technology and Decision Making**: Online platforms and financial apps can reinforce pre-decisions or biases by the way information is presented or by making recommendations based on user behavior. Understanding this can help banks design better digital interactions that encourage more balanced decision-making.

10. **Trust and Relationship Building**: Ultimately, a bank's ability to build trust and a strong relationship can determine whether customers are open to hearing when their pre-formed decisions might not be in their best interest.

Exploring these aspects could provide a rich analysis of customer behavior in the banking sector, offering insights into how banks can better serve their customers by understanding the psychological underpinnings of their financial decisions.

Theory

There are several psychological and economic theories that can support the analysis of how customers make pre-determined decisions and seek confirmation in banking environments. Here are some of the key theories and concepts that can underpin your exploration:

1. **Confirmation Bias Theory**: This is a fundamental concept in psychology that forms part of cognitive bias research. Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors. This is directly applicable to how customers might prefer banking advice that confirms their initial decisions.

2. **Cognitive Dissonance Theory (Leon Festinger)**: This theory posits that individuals have an inherent desire to avoid inconsistency in their beliefs and actions. When faced with information that contradicts their beliefs or decisions, people experience discomfort (dissonance) and are motivated to reduce it, often by rejecting new information that conflicts with their existing beliefs.

3. **Prospect Theory (Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky)**: This theory from behavioral economics describes how people choose between probabilistic alternatives that involve risk, where the probabilities of outcomes are known. The theory shows that people value gains and losses differently, leading to decision-making biases, which can be seen in how they might choose financial products.

4. **Theory of Planned Behavior (Icek Ajzen)**: This theory helps explain how people's intentions to engage in a behavior are influenced by attitudes toward the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. In a banking context, this could relate to the decision-making process before a customer approaches the bank.

5. **Heuristics and Biases (Tversky and Kahneman)**: This theory explores simple, efficient rules that people use to form judgments and make decisions. Common heuristics include the availability heuristic (basing decisions on immediate examples that come to mind) and the representativeness heuristic (basing decisions on similarities to a prototype), both of which can affect financial decisions made by customers.

6. **Social Proof (Robert Cialdini)**: This principle, from the broader field of influence, suggests that individuals look to the behavior of others to guide their own actions, particularly in uncertain situations. This can relate to customers seeking validation from bankers as a form of social proof for their financial decisions.

7. **Rational Choice Theory**: While often critiqued, this economic theory suggests that individuals use rational calculations to make logical decisions that provide them with the greatest satisfaction and are in their highest self-interest. Understanding where and why customers deviate from this theory can provide insights into irrational financial behaviors and the need for confirmation.

These theories can be leveraged to create a framework for understanding and analyzing how and why customers often seek validation of their pre-formed decisions from their banks, and how banks can effectively respond to these psychological needs.

Tra/ tpb

If you're looking for a theory closely related to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) that applies well to decision-making in banking, you might consider the **Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)**. This theory is actually a precursor to TPB and was also developed by Icek Ajzen, together with Martin Fishbein. It focuses on the determinants of consciously intended behaviors, which is very relevant in a banking context where decisions are often deliberate and considered.

Here's how TRA works and its applicability to banking:

### Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA)

- **Core Components**: The theory posits that an individual's behavior is determined by their intention to perform the behavior, which in turn is influenced by their attitude toward the behavior and the subjective norms surrounding it.

- **Attitude**: In the context of banking, this would involve a customer's positive or negative evaluations of performing a particular financial behavior, such as investing in a certain type of financial product.

- **Subjective Norms**: These are the perceived social pressures to perform or not perform the behavior. For example, if influential people in a customer's life believe they should invest in real estate rather than stocks, this could strongly influence their decision-making.

- **Behavioral Intention**: This is the likelihood that a person will perform the behavior, based on the combination of attitude and subjective norms. For instance, if a customer has a favorable attitude towards saving and perceives a normative pressure to save for future needs, they are more likely to open a savings account.

### Applicability to Banking

- **Customer Interactions**: Understanding TRA can help banks tailor their interactions with customers by focusing on influencing both the attitudes and the perceived norms of their customers. For instance, banks might design marketing campaigns that highlight the social approval of saving or investing wisely, alongside promoting the personal benefits of such behaviors.

- **Product Design and Promotion**: Banks can use insights from TRA to design financial products that align more closely with the attitudes and norms of their target customer base, making these products more attractive and increasing the likelihood of adoption.

### Comparison with TPB

- While TPB is an extension of TRA, adding the component of perceived behavioral control (the perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behavior, which can also influence intent), TRA focuses more purely on the motivational factors as a result of attitudes and norms. In many banking decisions, particularly those that are less complex or where customers feel they have high control, TRA might be just as effective for understanding customer behavior.

Both theories are valuable for understanding how decisions are made in financial settings and can be used to predict how likely an individual is to engage in a particular financial behavior, such as applying for a loan, choosing a new banking service, or investing.

New perspective

Given your interest in exploring beyond the well-trodden paths of TRA and TPB, you might consider delving into theories that incorporate a broader or slightly different scope of psychological and social factors influencing decision-making. Here are a few theoretical frameworks that could offer a new perspective:

1. **Nudge Theory (Behavioral Economics)**:

   Developed by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge Theory suggests that positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions can influence the behavior and decision-making of groups or individuals, effectively "nudging" them towards certain actions. In a banking context, nudging can be applied to encourage customers towards financially beneficial behaviors, like increased savings or prudent investing, through subtle modifications in how choices are presented.

2. **Dual-Process Theories (Cognitive Psychology)**:

   Theories like Kahneman's System 1 and System 2 (from his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow") explore how decisions are made based on two different systems: one that is fast, intuitive, and emotional (System 1), and another that is slower, more deliberate, and logical (System 2). Understanding how these two systems interact could provide insights into why customers make certain financial decisions almost instinctively, while others require more thought and analysis.

3. **Social Cognitive Theory (Albert Bandura)**:

   This theory emphasizes the role of observational learning, social experience, and reciprocal determinism in human behavior. In banking, this could translate into understanding how customers learn financial behaviors from observing others (like family, friends, or influencers) and how these observed behaviors interact with personal factors and environmental contexts to influence financial decision-making.

4. **Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) Theory (Environmental Psychology)**:

   Originally developed to explain pro-environmental behavior, VBN theory posits that individual actions are driven by deeper values and beliefs, which then influence specific attitudes and norms. Applying this to banking, research could explore how deep-seated values and beliefs about money and financial security influence banking decisions.

5. **Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) of Persuasion**:

   This model, developed by Petty and Cacioppo, explains how individuals process persuasive information through either a central route (focus on the quality and argument of the information) or a peripheral route (focus on superficial aspects like the attractiveness of the presenter or presentation). Banks could use this model to better craft their communications and product offerings to align with the way customers process information.

Each of these theories offers a distinct lens through which to examine customer behaviors in financial settings, providing potential for fresh insights and innovative strategies in banking services and customer relations. They could also help in designing interventions that are not just based on rationality and norms but also consider broader psychological, social, and cognitive dimensions.

Here are five academic journal articles that explore Daniel Kahneman's theories, particularly focusing on decision-making, biases, and cognitive processes within the context of banking and finance. These references are styled in APA format:

1. **Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., & Bruine de Bruin, W. (2017). Decision-making competence, executive functioning, and general cognitive abilities as predictors of financial decisions. *Journal of Behavioral Decision Making*, 30(1), 36-49.**

   - This paper examines how cognitive abilities, as described by Kahneman, influence financial decision-making, providing a nuanced understanding of competence in financial contexts.

2. **Agarwal, S., & Mazumder, B. (2013). Cognitive abilities and household financial decision making. *American Economic Journal: Applied Economics*, 5(1), 193-207.**

   - The study uses Kahneman's dual-process theory to analyze how cognitive abilities affect the financial decisions of households, with implications for banking and financial advisories.

3. **Lusardi, A., & Mitchell, O. S. (2014). The economic importance of financial literacy: Theory and evidence. *Journal of Economic Literature*, 52(1), 5-44.**

   - While broadly focused on financial literacy, this article integrates concepts from Kahneman's work to explain how cognitive limitations impact financial decision-making and economic outcomes.

4. **Gathergood, J. (2012). Self-control, financial literacy and consumer over-indebtedness. *Journal of Economic Psychology*, 33(3), 590-602.**

   - This article explores the psychological underpinnings of financial behavior, referencing Kahneman's insights into how self-control and cognitive biases influence over-indebtedness.

5. **Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. *Journal of Personality and Social Psychology*, 92(5), 938-956.**

   - This research explores the broader implications of Kahneman's theories on individual differences in decision-making competence, with implications for financial decision-making strategies in banking.

These articles will provide a comprehensive look at how Kahneman's theories have been applied in financial decision-making and banking studies, offering insights into consumer behavior, risk assessment, and the cognitive processes influencing financial decisions.