About MindGame Research Lab
Advancing the science of human choice.
Africa’s first research laboratory dedicated exclusively to behavioral economics — studying how people really decide, and building the next generation of African behavioral scientists.
About MindGame Research Lab
MindGame Research Lab is Africa’s first research laboratory exclusively dedicated to behavioral economics. We investigate how individuals make decisions under uncertainty by combining experimental economics, game theory, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and computational methods. Through rigorous scientific research, we seek to advance the understanding of strategic human behavior while building the next generation of African behavioral scientists.
Our work bridges theory and evidence. We design controlled behavioral experiments, develop formal models of strategic interaction, and apply modern analytical tools to uncover the mechanisms that drive human choice. Alongside our research mission, we serve as an academic incubator where students receive intensive mentorship, methodological training, and hands-on research experience — preparing them to become independent researchers and future scientific leaders.
Why human decision-making matters
Every day, people make decisions that shape economies, organizations, governments, and societies. Whether negotiating a contract, choosing an investment, responding to public policy, or cooperating with others, individuals rarely possess perfect information or unlimited cognitive resources. Human behavior is shaped by uncertainty, bounded rationality, incentives, emotions, and strategic interaction.
Behavioral economics emerged to understand how people actually make decisions rather than how perfectly rational models predict they should. Herbert Simon’s concept of bounded rationality transformed economics by showing that individuals often seek satisfactory solutions instead of mathematically optimal ones. Since then, behavioral research has reshaped economics, psychology, finance, political science, and public policy.
At MindGame, we contribute to this scientific tradition by producing rigorous experimental evidence on how people perceive risk, process information, cooperate, compete, and adapt to complex environments. Our goal is not merely to explain human behavior, but to expand the empirical foundations of decision science.
Why Africa needs behavioral economics
Despite the global growth of behavioral economics over the past several decades, dedicated research infrastructure in Africa remains limited. Much of the existing evidence that informs economic theory and public policy has been generated outside the continent, leaving many questions about human behavior within African social, institutional, and cultural contexts unexplored.
MindGame was founded to help close this gap. We aim to establish a world-class center for behavioral economics where African researchers generate original scientific knowledge rather than simply consume it. By developing locally driven research while engaging with the international scientific community, we strengthen both the global discipline and Africa’s contribution to it.
How we work
The MindGame Research Cycle
Scientific progress is driven by a continuous process of theoretical model development and empirical validation. Our work follows an iterative loop designed to systematically refine our understanding of strategic choice — question, theory, simulation, experiment, refinement, and back again.
“Science advances through iteration, not confirmation.”
Question
Every study starts from a fundamental question: how do people decide, cooperate, and compete under uncertainty?
The loop
Hover or tap a stage to see what happens there.
Our Growth Across Africa
From Tunis, outward across the continent
MindGame Research Lab is headquartered in Tunis. Africa has 54 countries, each with its own institutions, its own questions and its own decisions to get right — and our long-term ambition is to do research alongside far more of them than we do today.
Tunis, TunisiaHeadquartersWhere the lab was founded and where our researchers, experiments and teaching are based today. Every project on this site starts here.
- More to comeNext
We're building research partnerships and branches across the continent. If you're at a university, ministry or lab that wants evidence behind its decisions, we'd like to hear from you.
What we do
Three arms of one mission: to produce rigorous behavioral science, and to grow the scientists who will carry it forward.
Experimental & Theoretical Research
We develop formal frameworks and run laboratory, online, and field experiments to study strategic interaction, bargaining, cooperation, and decision-making under risk.
Computational Behavioral Science
We integrate advanced statistical methods and computational modeling to analyze behavioral data, uncover hidden patterns, and build high-precision models of human choice.
Research Incubation
We prepare African students to become fully autonomous principal investigators through hands-on research, methodological instruction, and intensive mentorship.
Our Mission
To advance behavioral economics through rigorous experimental research, while cultivating the next generation of African behavioral scientists.
Our Vision
To establish Africa as a globally recognized center for behavioral economics and experimental decision science — producing internationally influential research and developing scientists who shape the future of the discipline.
Our P.U.R.E. values
Four commitments hold our work to account — how we choose questions, run studies, report findings, and raise the researchers who do it.
Principles
We are guided by intellectual honesty, methodological transparency, and strong theoretical grounding. Every question we pursue, every experiment we design, and every analysis we conduct is anchored in sound science. We do not follow trends — we follow evidence.
Undisputed
Our research withstands the highest standards of scientific scrutiny. Every protocol is transparently executed, meticulously vetted, and designed to meet the rigorous requirements of top international journals and research institutions.
Rigor
Excellence is our baseline. We maintain unyielding standards across experimental design, data analysis, scientific writing, and student development to produce internationally competitive research.
Elevation
Great science depends on great scientists. We do not merely hire student assistants; we elevate them — providing direct mentorship and clear pathways to help emerging scholars become independent principal investigators who shape the global future of decision science.
Funders, universities, and research partners backing the lab and the researchers it trains
