Decision and judgment

Author: Scott Plous
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to psychologists who studied human decision-making and judgment, Professor Herbert A. Simon and Professor Daniel Kahneman, twice in unconventional years—1978 and 2002. This book systematically introduces their findings while also elaborating on many phenomena and research results in the psychology of decision-making and judgment that have yet to be recognized by economists and other social and humanities scientists. It can be said that over 80% of the content of this book goes beyond the work of Simon and Kahneman. Therefore, it is imaginable that there is still much room for psychologists to influence economics and related disciplines. No wonder former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan once jokingly said, "The so-called 'new economy' is actually just psychology."
This book is aimed at non-professionals who wish to understand the basics of the psychology of decision-making and judgment. It emphasizes experimental results rather than psychological theories, unexpected conclusions rather than speculations, and descriptions of research rather than mathematical formulas. In short, this book is designed to make readers happy and thoughtful, as well as to spread and popularize psychological knowledge.
The book is divided into six parts. The first two parts primarily introduce the basic elements of decision-making and judgment, including perception, memory, context, and questioning methods. The third and fourth parts mainly discuss classic decision-making models and contrast them with recent new models of judgment biases. The fifth part explores group judgments and judgments about groups. The sixth part discusses common pitfalls in decision-making and judgment. Each chapter is designed as a standalone topic, so readers can freely jump between chapters or arrange the reading order as they wish.
One unique feature of this book is the reader survey before the first chapter, which consists of questions adapted and replicated from the research issues discussed in later chapters.