Average customer rating:
- Good,but with Keynes included it would have been better
- An interesting read
- Helps you understand decisions -- and life, too
- Helps you understand decisions -- and life, too
- A great update to a classic
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Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making
Reid Hastie , and
Robyn M. Dawes
Manufacturer: Sage Publications, Inc
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Similar Items:
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The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making
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Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment
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Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
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Choices, Values, and Frames
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The New Rational Manager
ASIN: 076192275X |
Book Description
When faced with an important decision, we are often on our own to think through what we might do and what the probable consequences of out behaviors are. As we make these judgements, it is important that we be able to communicate precisely and fluently with one another. In
Rational Choice in an Uncertain World, renowned authors Hastie and Dawes compare the basic principles of rationality with actual behavior in making decisions. They describe theories and research finding from the field of judgment and decision making in a non-technical manner, using anecdotes as a teaching device. Intended as an introductory textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, the material not only is of scholarly interest but is practical as well.
In this volume, you’ll find:
- New, student-friendly chapter introductions and conclusions
- Practical, everyday examples from the fields of finance, medicine, law and engineering
- Comprehensive, up-to-date information keeping pace with changing ideas within the field
Additional discussion of the descriptive, psychological models of decision making to expand upon the original emphasis on normative, rational, expected utility models
Customer Reviews:
Good,but with Keynes included it would have been better.......2004-12-14
The authors of this book,like so many other psychologists in the area of decision making under uncertainty(ambiguity)in the real world ,as opposed to risk,appear to think that "modern"behavioral decision theory started with Daniel Ellsberg and advanced on the shoulders of Tversky and Kahneman with Hogarth and Einhorn close behind.They do a good job covering the conventional wisdom of that view.Unfortunately,they ignore the seminal and path breaking contributions made to the field of decision making under uncertainty by John Maynard Keynes in his classic work,titled A Treatise on Probability in 1921.Keynes was the first to systematically develop an interval estimate(set) approach to the calculation of probabilities.Keynes was the first to specify an index to measure the ambiguity of the potential available evidence upon which a decision maker would attempt to make reliable probability estimates.Keynes called this problem the weight of the evidence problem.Forty years before Ellsberg(1961),Keynes had already specified an index to measure the completeness of the relevant available evidence,w.w was defined on the unit interval between 0 and 1,i.e.,0<=w<=1.Keynes's w index is practically the same as Ellsberg's rho index.Keynes successfully generalized the expected value rule(maximize pA=EMV)and the expected utility rule(maximize pU(A))where p is a probability,A is the outcome,and U is an appropriately differentiable utility function with his decision weight model that he called a conventional coefficient of weight and risk,c.The goal of the decision maker is to maximize cA,where c equals p/(1+q)[2w/(1+w}].Keynes's decision weight rule ,c, not only solves all of the Ellsberg paradox problems,but also the certainty ,reflection , and translation effect problems,as well as the preference reversal problems.
An interesting read.......2003-01-14
I read this book as part of a college course on cognition. It was defintely the most interesting of the 3 books we read in this class.
The book effectively teaches you how to go about making well-thought-out decisions. The text in itself is easy to read and comprehend. There are also many apt examples, both abstract and from everyday life. This combination ensures a successful reading of this book.
While I would have probably never read this book if not for the class I took, I'm glad I did and would recommend this people from all walks of life. Being able to make a good, well-thought-out, rational decision is the best skill one can have.
Helps you understand decisions -- and life, too.......2002-08-12
The authors emphasize that decision-making is a skill that can be learned and improved. As I work with career changers, I have become convinced that most of us have not learned this skill, and most of us could benefit from a careful reading of this book.
Hastie and Dawes present results of scientific psychological research, using language that is easy for the ordinary person to understand. Their examples come from everyday life and news stories: Chernobyl, the "hot hand" theory of basketball, mammography.
I would also recommend this book to any students of psychology, including those entering graduate school in social psychology, marketing or management. Hastie and Dawes demonstrate that academic studies needn't be dry, but in fact yield fascinating conclusions that are widely relevant. At the same time, they show the way researchers think and introduce the notion of probability in a way that makes readers want to learn more.
Helps you understand decisions -- and life, too.......2002-08-12
The authors emphasize that decision-making is a skill that can be learned and improved. As I work with career changers, I have become convinced that most of us have not learned this skill, and most of us could benefit from a careful reading of this book.
Hastie and Dawes present results of scientific psychological research, using language that is easy for the ordinary person to understand. Their examples come from everyday life and news stories: Chernobyl, the "hot hand" theory of basketball, mammography.
I would also recommend this book to any students of psychology, including those entering graduate school in social psychology, marketing or management. Hastie and Dawes demonstrate that academic studies needn't be dry, but in fact yield fascinating conclusions that are widely relevant. At the same time, they show the way researchers think and introduce the notion of probability in a way that makes readers want to learn more.
A great update to a classic.......2002-07-27
The addition of Reid Hastie as an author to Robyn Dawes' classic text on judgment and decision making was superb choice. This edition appears to be written very much in Hastie's voice, from the perspective of a cognitive psychologist. Moreover, we find additional attention paid to algebraic models, which was something that was missing from previous editions. Hastie and Dawes ranks as one of the essential readings for the judgment and decision-making field.
Book Description
This exciting volume marks the birth of a new field--a field that studies law with reference to an accurate, rather than a crude, understanding of human behavior. Behavioral Law and Economics presents new findings in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, which show that people are frequently both unselfish and over-optimistic; that people have limited willpower and limited self-control; and that people are "boundedly" rational, in the sense that they have limited information-processing powers, and frequently rely on mental short-cuts and rules of thumb. Understanding this kind of human behavior has large-scale implications for the analysis of law, in areas including environmental protection, taxation and tax compliance, constitutional law, voting behavior, punitive damages for civil rights violations, labor negotiations and strikes, and corporate finance. Behavioral Law and Economics offers many new insights into these fields and suggestions for legal reform. With a better knowledge of human behavior, it is possible to predict the actual effects of law, to see how law might actually promote society's goals, and to reassess the questions of what law should be doing.
Customer Reviews:
Behavioral Economics Comes of Age.......2001-08-24
There are several prominent legal scholars who work in the interface of social theory and law, but Cass Sunstein is, to my mind, one of the very few really innovative thinkers with full control of social theory. This edited collection shows that the approach he has been working on for the past several years, has finally come of age.
The first synthesis of law and economics took place several decades ago, based on the seminal work of Nobel prize winning Chicago economist Ronald Coase. The synthesis was based on the so-called "rational actor model" (often called homo Economicus) that can be derived from certain axiomatic, mathematics-like principles, based on the notion of self-interest and utility maximization. This was a major breakthrough in social theory and policy.
But the "rational actor model" has been shown to be systematically violated by real human beings, and behavioral economics arose to ammend the "rational actor model" to fit the reality. It's not that people are irrational, but rather the concept of rationality used in the traditional theory is seriously wanting. If you're interested in this larger backdrop to the present book, there is a marvelous new book on the subject edited by its creators, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, called "Choices, Values, and Frames."
The introductory chapters of Behavioral Law and Economics are refreshingly clear and free of jargon. These are followed by some of the most important articles that have been written on the topic over the past several years.
Behavioral law and economics is not just some academic field. It is absolutely, front and center, critical to political philosophy and the policy sciences in general. This book is for both expert and layperson alike---a real tour de force.
Book Description
Researchers in a growing number of fields--public policy, law, business, medicine, psychology, engineering, and others--are working to understand and improve human judgment and decision making. This book, which presupposes no formal training, brings together a selection of key articles in the area, with careful organization, introduction and commentaries. Issues involving medical diagnosis, weather forecasting, labor negotiations, risk, public policy, business strategy, eyewitnesses, and jury decisions are treated in this largely expanded volume. This is a revision of Arkes and Hammond's 1986 collection on judgment and decision making. Updated and extended, the focus of this volume is interdisciplinary and applied.
Customer Reviews:
The contribution of J M Keynes to decision making is missing.......2004-12-15
The major criticism of this book is the omission of any discussion of John Maynard Keynes's unique and highly original contributions to decision making under risk,uncertainty,and ignorance that were made, long before Ellsberg,Tversky and Kahneman were even born,in the A Treatise on Probability in 1921.Keynes,not Ellsberg,was the first to specify an index to take into account the relative credibility of the available information base upon which the decision maker would base his probability calculations.Keynes's index specifies the weight of the evidence,w,as a measure of the completeness of the relevant information currently and potentially available.w is defined on the unit interval [0,1],0
<=w
<=1.Keynes,not Ellsberg,was the first to incorporate his w variable(Ellsberg's rho variable)into a decision rule which generalized both the expected (monetary)value and (subjective)expected utility rules.Instead of maximizing EMV=pA or SEU=pU(A),the decision maker would maximize cA,where c=p(1/[1+q])[2w/(1+w)].Keynes's decision rule,not Tversky and Kahneman's Prospect theory,was the first to provide decision weights,called by Keynes conventional coefficients of weight and risk(see c above),that provided explicit numerical solutions to the certainty,reflection,translation,and preference reversal effects.Keynes,not I Good,B Koopmans or H Kyburg,was the first to present a mathematically and technically sound exposition of a clearly specified interval(set) estimate approach for probability.Finally ,Keynes's weight of the evidence approach allows one to clearly distinguish between risk,uncertainty,and ignorance.Risk is the case if w=1.Ignorance is the case if w=0.Uncertainty(or ambiguity)is the case if 0
A Complete Reference Book.......2000-08-17Research on judgment and decision making is so wide and deep that it is hard to find your way through it. This book, as it has been written on back cover, was written in an interdisciplinary format. Readers can find valuble and detailed applied research subject on psychology, economics, law, health, ... etc. Needless to say this book is most suitable for professionals.
Dogan Kokdemir
Book Description
Decisions are influenced by a variety of fallacies and biases that we can learn how to avoid. Critical thinking values, knowledge, and skills, therefore, are integral to evidence-based practice. These emphasize the importance of recognizing ignorance as well as knowledge and the vital role of criticism in discovering how to make better decisions. This book is for clinicians--clinicians who are willing to say "I don't know."
Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice, Second Edition is designed to enhance readers' skills in making well-informed, ethical decisions. Making such decisions is no easy task. Decisions are made in uncertain, changing environments with time pressures. Interested parties, such as the pharmaceutical industry, spend millions of dollars to influence decisions made. Drawing on a wide range of related literature, this book describes common pitfalls in clinical reasoning as well as strategies for avoiding them--sometimes called mind-tools. Mental health and allied professionals will come away from this text with knowledge of how classification decisions, a focus on pathology, and reliance on popularity can cause errors. Hazards involved in data collection and team decision making such as groupthink are discussed.
Part 1 provides an overview of the context in which clinicians make decisions.
Part 2 describes common sources of error.
Part 3 describes decision aids including the process of evidence-based practice.
Part 4 describes the application of related content to different helping phases including assessment, intervention, and evaluation.
Part 5 suggests obstacles to making well-informed decisions and how to encourage lifelong learning.
This new Second Edition has been completely updated with expanded coverage on:
- Evidence-based practice
- Screening issues and practice errors
- Lifelong learning
- Problem solving
- Decision making
An interactive, dynamic book filled with insightful examples, useful lists and guidelines, and exercises geared to encourage critical thinking, Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice, Second Edition provides an essential resource for helping professionals and students.
Average customer rating:
- Very good introductory decision making textbook
- Solid Introductory Text on Social Psychology
- Judging Judgment and Decision Making
- Scott Plous is a star. This is an inspiring text that had my brain popping.
- A lot of materials in this Great Book
|
The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making
Scott Plous
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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Rational Choice in an Uncertain World: The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making
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Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases
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How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life
-
Choices, Values, and Frames
-
Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment
ASIN: 0070504776 |
Book Description
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING offers a comprehensive introduction to the field with a strong focus on the social aspects of decision making processes. Winner of the prestigious William James Book Award, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING is an informative and engaging introduction to the field written in a style that is equally accessible to the introductory psychology student, the lay person, or the professional. A unique feature of this volume is the Reader Survey which readers are to complete before beginning the book. The questions in the Reader Survey are drawn from many of the studies discussed throughout the book, allowing readers to compare their answers with the responses given by people in the original studies. This title is part of The McGraw-Hill Series in Social Psychology.
Customer Reviews:
Very good introductory decision making textbook.......2007-07-13
This textbook is so well-written that it is a a great pleasure to read! I love this book, although there are a few things to be noticed:
1. Coverage is a not as inclusive as it could be.
2. A little old - I wish there were a second edition or something.
3. Tracing references is a little difficult.
Solid Introductory Text on Social Psychology.......2007-06-17
If you are interested in getting a glimpse into the way people make decisions under ambiguous, complex, or non-linear conditions, this book is a good place to start. I only gave it four stars, however, because it failed to leave me with a strong impression. Many experiments are covered, but there's little in the way of practical application or insight.
The book starts out with a 12 page reader survey, which I encourage you to skip. It took me an hour to complete, but didn't add anything to my grasp of the material. The author uses it to prevent hindsight bias, which I experienced vividly when telling my sister about one of the experiments covered in the book. "Of course," she said, like the whole concept was so obvious that the average idiot has already figured it out. That's hindsight bias.
Another interesting concept is attitude-behavior inconsistency. One example is the road trip a psychologist took with a Chinese couple in the 1930's when anti-Chinese sentiment was prevalent in the U.S. In the vast majority of cases the couple was treated quite well. After the trip, the psychologist anonymously contacted the places they had stayed at, and asked if Chinese people were accommodated. The vast majority of responses were, "No." Another example of attitude-behavior inconsistency given is when Seminary students on their way to give a speech on being a Good Samaritan ignored a person in an alley dressed as a bum who was coughing and moaning.
Another interesting concept was social loafing, which demonstrated that a person working in a threesome will expend 85% of the effort they would expend if working alone.
There were a few examples in the book, however, that seem to demonstrate a lack of understanding on the author's part. One was the experiment that demonstrated that doctors could be easily misled into diagnosing the odds of a tumor being malignant at 75% rather than the true probability of 7%. This is a fascinating result with practical implications, but this topic was not explored in detail, leaving me feeling quite unsatisfied. This is the second book that has handled this experiment superficially, unfortunately.
Another example was the chart showing weather forecasters versus doctors. The author commented that weather forecasters were more accurate than doctors in their predictions, contrary to popular opinion. In reality, the chart demonstrated that weather forecasters are much more aware of their limitations than are doctors, because they get immediate feedback regarding their predictive failures, and are therefore much less confident regarding their predictive abilities than are doctors who often do not receive such feedback.
The main takeaway I got from this book was that it is possible to make better decisions, if one listens to contrary opinions, and by empathizing with those who hold them. This exercise may not change your decision, but it will help minimize common biases and decision-making errors.
The author does a nice job at the end of letting readers know that even psychological researchers are prone to making many of the judgment errors discussed in the book. He also provides a list of books for further reading, including one of my favorites, How We Know What Ain't So by Gilovich. The Gilovich book is definitely my first recommendation for anyone just starting to explore this fascinating field.
Judging Judgment and Decision Making .......2005-10-18
A decade ago Scott Plous produced a very readable summary of research in social psychology and (what is now known as) behavioral economics.
Our understanding of how people actually behave (as opposed to our theories as to how they should behave) has been immeasurably enriched by work dating (variously) from Herbert Simon, Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, Stanley Milgram and many others.
Management education has yet to fully take into account the many insights coming from psychologists, experimental economists and others so nicely summarized in this book.
Scott Plous is a star. This is an inspiring text that had my brain popping........2005-09-19
I write this from the perspective of a social and market researcher, and thought I was quite aware of many of the nuances and pitfalls that can render our scientific research somewhat open to question. But Scott Plous, with his vivid, lively writing style, his acute logic and well chosen case studies shows what a hell of a minefield it is that we work in. The Psychology of Judgment and Decisionmaking is a rich resource book of human insight that is at once vitally useful (this book has opened me up to new insights and led me to rethink many aspects of research design) and awfully humbling: there's a pair of pie charts on Page 54 that show that whatever questions we may have about margins of error, the way we happen to phrase the question may well have a much larger effect.
In total, Plous entertains, he shares wise insights and he challenges the reader. I wish Amazon had room for 6 stars. I'd give this one 7.
A lot of materials in this Great Book.......2005-07-05
This is a very dense book, relatively easy to read, and very2 helpful. I love Blink and The Tipping Point, but this book probably has much much more materials, arguably more than 5 times of inside that those two best sellers combined.
I am very interested in the popular psycology stuffs, and Influence by Cialdini is my fav. So this book in some way give you the same chockful of surprises and new insight that will change the way you think.
I came across recomended by a University of Chicago MBA -email friend- who has much similar books favourites and he recomended this highly, and i absolutely agree and i would be glad to recommend this to anyone interested in human behaviour and psychology of bias.
MBA students should read this one and surely will enjoy this. I always draw, marks and put notes on my book and i think i end up marking so much of the materials.
Section one: Perception, Memory and Context
Section two: How Questions affect answers
Section three: Model of Decision making
Section Four: Heurictis and Biases.
Section five: The Social side of judgment and decision making
Section six: Common traps.
Some will complain that this book derived from a lot of previous psychological research, i agree, so for the psychology veteran out there, this might not the right book for you, but for most of us, this book will enlight, entertain and amuse us all...
Book Description
The Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making is a state-of-the art overview of current topics and research in the study of how people make evaluations, draw inferences, and make decisions under conditions of uncertainty and conflict. Chapters are contributed by experts in the field from various disciplines such as psychology, cognitive science, business, and law. The selection of topics reflects current trends and controversies in judgment and decision-making research. Each chapter provides an overview of important past research and a report on current research and future directions in various areas in the study of human judgment and decision making.The book:provides a glimpse at the many approaches that have been taken in the study of judgment and decision making, including bounded rationality, computational modelling, and the heuristics and biases approachportrays the major findings in the field and covers topics such as probablistic reasoning, hypothesis testing, multiattribute choice, and decision making under risk and uncertaintypresents examinations of the broader roles of social, emotional, and cultural influences on decision makingexplores applications of judgment and decision-making research to important problems in a variety of professional contexts, including finance, accounting, medicine, public policy, and the law.
Book Description
By exposing readers to a wide variety of new and promising perspectives, this book enhances the scope of judgment and decision-making research. It bridges the gap between traditional paradigms and new lines of inquiry; expands awareness of new theories and approaches; and demonstrates how alternative approaches can enhance understanding.
Customer Reviews:
excellent source for evaluating the state of the art .......2004-08-13
In my opinion, this book is an excellent synthesis of the state of the art in judgement and decision making (for short: JDM) research. It shows what has been achieved so far and it indicates key topics of future research. I won't attempt to review the entire book (see e. g. Nickerson in: Journal of Mathematical Psychology, Vol. 48, 2004, p. 199-210), but I will try to give an idea of why this book can be a valuable source for people not belonging to the community of JDM researchers.
JDM research has been a very active field for decades, leading to a bulk of publications. The present book seems to be singular, because the authors of the different articles do not only summarise the work they have done so far, but they also try to reveal very basic concepts and limitations of their various research programs. This kind of information tends to get lost in everyday research and publications related to it, but such inforamtion is indispensible for a precise and comprehensive overview and for evaluating what has been achieved so far. Just to give an example: Human JDM capabilities can be seen as a powerful resource for coping with particular tasks or it can be considered to be a source of biases and pitfalls, which impede people's mastering of such tasks. Most reaerchers can be assigned to one of these two curreents. What is still missing is a comprehensive model which reveals which factors and factor combinations determine whether a decision is "good" or "bad", "biased" or "rational". Such models should not only apply to the artificial tasks used in laboratory studies preferred by many JDM researchers, they should also help understand people's coping with real-life JDM tasks. The authors of the different articles succeed in indicating their particular point of view and research interets and they succeed in showing strehgths and weaknesses of their approaches in relation to the work of their colleagues. A concluding chapter by Doherty provides an additional, very systematic, and very concise outline of the different research paradigms, of their relationships and of the topics which so far have either been neglected of not been treated in much detail. The prersent book is therefore very illuminating with respect to the basic orientations, current state and main desiderates of JDM research.
Book Description
Decision making in organizations is often pictured as a coherent and rational process in which alternative interests and perspectives are considered in an orderly manner until the best choice is selected. Yet, as most experienced members of organizations will attest, real decision processes seldom fit such a description. This book brings together researchers who focus on cognitive aspects of decision processes, along with those who study organizational aspects such as conflict, incentives, power and ambiguity. These multiple perspectives are intended to further our understanding of organizational decision making. Contributors often cite specific cases, and all foundations of organizational decision making are covered in considerable detail.
Customer Reviews:
Some informative essays;some uninformative essays.......2006-11-16
This book is made up of a disparate collection of essays of varying quality written on organizational decision making.I will concentrate my review on essay four ,which was written by Kunreuther and Meszaros.This essay attempts to deal with Ellsbergian ambiguity which the two coauthors call Knightian uncertainty.On page 78,footnote 5 they claim that Knight was the first to formally differentiate between uncertainty and risk in 1921.Knight provides no formal analysis of the differences between risk and uncertainty other than to state, inexactly, that under risk probabilities are measurable and under uncertainty probabilities are not measurable.
J M Keynes was the first to provide a formal analysis in his A Treatise on Probability(TP) in 1921 when he defined a measure,w, on the unit interval between 0 and 1 that measured the completeness of the relevant ,potential available evidence or knowledge(versus relevant ignorance)upon which a decision maker would base his estimates of probabilities.Unless w=1,it will be impossible to specify a specific probability distribution and/or use unique,single numbers to serve as numerical estimates.If w
<1,the best a decision maker can do is to use interval estimates or comparative estimates.If w=1,then Keynes's theory merges with the special subjectivist or personalist theory constructed by F P Ramsey in 1926.Let A,B and C be the arguments of Ramsey's conditional probabilities and a,b, and c the arguments of Keynes's conditional probabilities.Only in the case where w=1 will P(A/B)=C be the same as P(a/b)=c.In his 1931 review of Ramsey's works,Keynes yields to Ramsey only in the case where the probability calculus is operational.Of course,the probability calculus is only operational in the case where w=1.Only in this case will the standard addition and multiplication operations give numerical answers.The interested reader can find Keynes's analysis on p.315 and p.315,footnote 2 of his TP.Every decision theorist in the Twentieth Century has overlooked Keynes's contribution.
Book Description
Decisions made by physicians, patients, health policy makers and health insurers determine the quality of health care that is needed and provided for. This up-to-date, comprehensive overview of medical decision making reveals a rapidly expanding field. The book covers quantitative theoretical tools for modeling decisions, psychological research on how decisions are actually made, and applied research on how physician and patient decision making can be improved. Hb ISBN (2000): 0-521-64159-4
Customer Reviews:
summary and table of contents.......2000-09-28
(Summary from the book jacket) Decision making is a crucial element in the field of medicine. The physician has to determine what is wrong with the patient and recommend treatment, while the patient has to decide whether or not to seek medical care and whether to go along with the treatment recommended by the physician. Health policy makers and health insurers have to decide what to promote, what to discourage, and what to pay for. Together, these decisions determine the quality of health care that is provided. "Decision Making in Health Care" is an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of the field of medical decision making - a rapidly expanding field that includes quantitative theoretical tools for modeling decisions, psychological research on how decisions are actually made, and applied research on how physicians and patient decision making can be improved.
List of Chapter Titles and Authors
INTRODUCTION AND THEORY
1. Introduction Gretchen B. Chapman, Ph.D., Rutgers University, Frank Sonnenberg, M.D., UMDNJ-RWJMS,
2. Decision modeling techniques Mark S. Roberts, MD, MPP, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine Frank Sonnenberg, MD, UMDNJ-RWJMS
3. Utility assessment under expected utility and rank dependent utility assumptions John Miyamoto, PhD, University of Washington
4. Evidence-based medicine John P.A. Ioannidis MD, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Joseph Lau. MD, New England Medical Center
HEALTH POLICY AND ECONOMICS
5. Linking health policy modeling with health policy formation and implementation David B. Matchar, MD and Greg P. Samsa, PhD, Duke University
6. Cost-effectiveness analysis Louise B. Russell, PhD, Rutgers University
PSYCHOLOGY OF MEDICAL DECISION MAKING
7. Cognitive processes and biases in medical decision making Gretchen B. Chapman, PhD, Rutgers University Arthur S. Elstein, PhD, University of Illinois of Chicago
8. Physician judgments of uncertainty Neal V. Dawson, MD, Case Western Reserve University
9. Bioethics and medical decision making: What can they learn from each other? Joshua Cohen, PhD, Department of Veterans Affairs, Philadelphia Medical Center David Asch, MD, University of Pennsylvania Peter Ubel, MD, University of Pennsylvania
10. Team medical decision making Caryn Christensen, PhD & Ann S. Abbott, University of Hartford
APPLICATIONS
11. Assessing patients' preferences Anne M. Stiggelbout, PhD, Leiden University
12. Applying utility assessment at the "bedside" Mary K. Goldstein, MD, Palo Alto Health Care System Joel Tsevat, MD, University of Cincinnati Medical Center
13. Advances in Presenting Health Information to Patients Holly Brügge Jimison, PhD & Paul Phillip Sher, MD, Oregon Health Sciences University
14. Computer-assisted clinical decision support Antoine Geissbuhler, MD & Randolph A. Miller, MD, Vanderbilt University Medical Center
15. Opportunities for applying psychological theory to improve medical decision making: Two case histories. Robert M. Hamm, PhD, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Dewey C. Scheid, MD, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center Wally R. Smith, MD, Medical College of Virginia Thomas G. Tape, MD, University of Nebraska Medical Center
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- Experimentalists talking to each other
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Social Psychology and Economics (The Society for Judgment and Decision Making Series) (Society for Judgement & Decision Making)
Manufacturer: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
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ASIN: 0805857559 |
Book Description
This book combines chapters written by leading social psychologists and economists, illuminating the developing trends in explaining and understanding economic behavior in a social world. It provides insights from both fields, communicated by eloquent scholars, and demonstrates through recent research and theory how economic behaviors may be more effectively examined using a combination of both fields.
Social Psychology and Economics comes at a particularly fitting time, as a psychological approach to economics has begun to flourish in recent years, and papers exploring the intersection of these two disciplines have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, opening a dynamic dialogue between previously separated fields. This volume, the first in the Society for Judgment and Decision Making Series since acquired by LEA, includes chapters by economists and psychologists. It addresses a variety of economic phenomena within a social context, such as scarcity and materialism, emphasizing the importance of integrating social psychology and economics.
Social Psychology and Economics is arranged in seven parts that discuss:
*an introduction to the topic;
*preferences, utility, and choice;
*emotions;
*reciprocity, cooperation, and fairness;
*social distance;
*challenges to social psychology and economics; and
*collaborative reflections and projections.
The market for this book is students, researchers, and professionals in the disciplines of economics, psychology, business, and behavioral decision making. Graduate students and upper-level undergraduate students will consider it a useful supplemental text.
Customer Reviews:
Experimentalists talking to each other.......2007-07-27
Northwestern University psychologist (and coeditor of this volume) J. Keith Murnighan and Harvard University economist Alvin E. Roth have worked together for some thirty years. Murnighan exclaims in their joint paper in this collection "It is completely clear that psychologists and economists take decidedly different approaches to understanding the same phenomena". (p. 330)
This should be a startling revelation, and a source of deep consternation to both disciplines. Do not both psychology and economics consider themselves sciences? How can two scientific disciplines disagree in explaining the same phenomena and yet not attempt to resolve their differences? In fact, the two disciplines appear to share a public culture of mutual respect and tolerance, despite the fact that such a culture has no place in the scientific enterprise.
There is no theory in this book. There is no social psychology theory because none exists (just lots of little nano-theories), and no economic theory because economic theory is of no value to social psychology, at least as far as I can ascertain from the editors' choices for inclusion in this collection. Rather, this book consists of social psychologists and experimental economists trading stories and bad-mouthing economic theory. While I take the experimental results discussed in this book as highly important, and they certainly imply that there is lots of work for theorists in coming to terms with actual human behavior, as a person interested in social theory, I am not thrilled with its complete absence in this book. In the rest of this review, I will discuss only how a theorist (in economics or psychology) might react to reading this book.
One theme that comes through several papers in this volume is that economists value a small number of highly general, parsimonious but somewhat inaccurate theories, while psychologists prefer a large number of highly specific theories, each of which is relatively accurate in its domain of application. Is accuracy vs. parsimony, then, an explanation of the differences between the fields? If so, the psychologists must be the winners, because there is little intrinsic value in parsimony, and great intrinsic value in accuracy. However, there is no ultimate value to the proliferation of models, each accurate over a short range of phenomena, unless they can be generalized to a common model of human behavior. For in the absence of generalization, "accurate" simply reduces to "descriptive." The problem with descriptive models is that they reveal little about the underlying behavioral and physiological processes. Economists may have not achieved the goal of scientific explanation of human behavior, but at least their underlying theoretical method offers this as the goal of research. Proliferating descriptive nano-models, by contrast, is an inherently limited enterprise.
Of course, neoclassical economic theorists have their own weakness in their renown lack of interest in "the facts." This bizarre group promotes a culture that treats economic theory as a set of axiological truths that may or may not have real-world application. There is no justification for this position. Indeed, if natural scientists had this attitude over the past few centuries, we still be in the scientific Middle Ages. The Great Equations of Science are the product of painful, direct, extended empirical explorations, not the sort of sui-generis theorizing favored in economic theory.
Social psychologists have a contrasting temperament. Like nature-lovers admiring strange shells on the beach, social psychologists delight in happening upon interesting fragments of human behavior. Do humans distinguish between causing harm and not preventing harm? Wow, that's really interesting! Are many people implicit racists, even though they don't know it? Excellent discovery! A prize find for a social psychologist or behavioral economist is even more cherished if it violates some Grand Theory, such as the economist's rational actor model. Showing that some Grand Theory is wrong, preferably a theory full of sophisticated mathematics, is to the social psychologist and the experimental economist the prize above all prizes.
There are some fine essays in this book, including those of Kevin McCabe, Iris Bohnet, and Max H. Bazerman and Deepak Malhotra. But, experimentalists talking to each other is not the answer to the deeper questions in the two fields. Pretending that this is the answer, and in particular accepting the social psychologists self-satisfaction with a situation in which the field is a collection of experiments connected to "nano-theories" that apply to tiny areas of social existence, is unsatisfying.
Economic theory should expand its horizon by applying decision theory, game theory, and perhaps other analytical tools towards developing a more general framework that explains the phenomena treated in this book, as well as other aspects of human behavior that are absent from the standard model of the self-regarding actor. Social psychology should adopt the far superior experimental methodology of behavioral economics, and since this methodology is firmly based in Bayesian decision theory and game theory, social psychology should take decision theory and game theory as the basis for modeling human behavior. Going beyond game theory and decision theory to embrace neuroeconomics may also have great explanatory value.
Social psychology is like anthropology and political science in that all must borrow certain basic principles of human behavior and social organization from other behavioral disciplines (biology, economics, sociology, cognitive and developmental psychology). By so doing, social psychology could become a field based on substantive social theory rather than a plethora of fascinating but ultimately descriptive insights.
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