The Center for Decision Research (CDR) at Chicago Booth is pleased to announce a $250,000 grant competition for work that uses behavioral science to explain or inform the ways that people pursue, experience, or fulfill purpose in their lives. The CDR is now accepting letters of intent for this competition, with the expectation that several 18-month projects (with budgets of at least $10,000, but not more than $125,000) will ultimately be funded starting in January 2014.

This RFP is the second of two conducted as part of the New Paths to Purpose Project (http://www.newpathstopurpose.org) at the CDR, supported with funding from the John Templeton Foundation. Led by Richard Thaler, Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics, and Eugene Caruso, Associate Professor of Behavioral Science, the aim of these RFPs, as well as of the project itself, is to use behavioral science to reshape the study, as well as the prevalent understandings and experiences, of purposeful living.

Whereas the current RFP is guided by the same overarching aims as the first, it has a distinct focus: to support both junior (e.g., pre-doctoral) and senior researchers in revealing hidden (e.g., unrecognized, counterintuitive, or underutilized) connections between behavioral science insights and the human experience of purpose. Thus, we are looking to support:

1) Purpose "Nudges” (following Thaler & Sunstein, 2008): Applied research demonstrating how basic behavioral science insights can be used in previously unrecognized or underutilized ways to create tools, interventions, etc. that help people more effectively experience (e.g., sense, adopt, pursue, fulfill) purpose.

2) Basic research illustrating previously unrecognized or counterintuitive ways in which behavioral science phenomena (e.g., motivation and goal pursuit, attitudes and beliefs, understandings of the self and others, perception and judgment, happiness and well-being) can help to explain the ways in which people experience (e.g., sense, adopt, pursue, fulfill) purpose, or vice versa.

The full Request for Proposals for this grant competition, including details on submission guidelines, can be found at: http://www.newpathstopurpose.org/rfp. If, after reading the full instructions on the RFP website, you have any further questions, please email them to purpose@chicagobooth.edu.

The deadline for Letters of Intent (LOIs) is May 15, 2013, 5:00PM Central Standard Time.