Moshe Hoffman is an Independent Scholar and Lecturer.
Moshe's work applies game theory, models of learning, evolution, and cognition, along with human-subject experiments, to decipher the (often non-conscious) role incentives play in shaping our behavior, preferences, and ideologies.
The course he teaches was co-designed with Erez Yoeli, and is titled "Game Theory and Social Behavior." Together, they published "Hidden Games", with Basic Books, which covers the same material. The Book is reviewed here.
Moshe has previously been employed as a Research Scientist at Harvard's Department of Mathematics, MIT's Media Lab, and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology. Moshe obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and his B.S. in Economics from the University of Chicago. He has taught at Harvard, Boston College, MIT, UCSD, and Hebrew U.
His work has been published in academic journals such as Nature Human Behavior, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature, Evolution and Human Behavior, and the American Economic Review, and has been covered in popular media including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, and the Boston Globe. He has also published brief pieces in the New Yorke Times, the Economist, and Politico.
Select Publications:
An Evolutionary Explanation for Ineffective Altruism
Why We Obscure Positive Traits and Good Deeds
Third-Party Punishment as a Costly Signal of Trustworthiness
Uncalculating Cooperation is used to Signal Trustworthiness
Cooperating without looking: Why we care what people think and not just what they do
Powering Up with Indirect Reciprocity in a Large-Scale Field Experiment
Select Media Coverage:
Theoretical Support found for ‘Authentic Altruism’,
Are your Morals too Good to be True?
Selected Editorials:
What’s the Point of Moral Outrage