The UNLV Health Law Program 3rd Annual Speaker Series welcomes George Loewenstein, PhD for "Information, Healthcare, and the Internet Age".

Economists usually assume that information is valued to the extent, and only to the extent, that it helps people make better decisions. This is obviously inaccurate, and inadequate for making sense of developments in the internet age. In this talk, Professor Loewenstein will discuss research on four phenomena that diverge from the economic assumption and are key to the information age: curiosity (the desire for information for its own sake), privacy (the desire to withhold information), information avoidance, and the desire to share information. For each of these four phenomena, he will discuss applications to healthcare.

Professor Loewenstein is Co-Director of the Center for Behavioral Decision Research at Carnegie Mellon University, and a leading scholar in the field of behavioral economics.