Economic crises bring to the fore deep issues for the economic profession: why are such crises often not foreseen, and what does this entail for economic theory? In this symposium we also adopt a self-critical analysis, by asking the following: what can the cognitive science community say or learn about cognition and behavior in the context of economic crises? After all, cognitive science shares one of its principle objectives with economics: to investigate and model the principles that underlie and govern human behavior.