Decision Science and Technology: Reflections on the Contributions of Ward Edwards
Abstract
Decision Science and Technology is a compilation of chapters written in honor of a remarkable man, Ward Edwards. Among Ward's many contributions are two significant accomplishments, either of which would have been enough for a very distinguished career. First, Ward is the founder of behavioral decision theory. This interdisciplinary discipline addresses the question of how people actually confront decisions, as opposed to the question of how they should make decisions. Second, Ward laid the groundwork for sound normative systems by noticing which tasks humans can do well and which tasks computers should perform. This volume, organized into five parts, reflects those accomplishments and more.
The book is divided into four sections: `Behavioral Decision Theory' examines theoretical descriptions and empirical findings about human decision making. `Decision Analysis' examines topics in decision analysis.`Decision in Society' explores issues in societal decision making. The final section, `Historical Notes', provides some historical perspectives on the development of the decision theory. Within these sections, major, multi-disciplinary scholars in decision theory have written chapters exploring some very bold themes in the field, as an examination of the book's contents will show.
The main reason for the health of the Decision Analysis field is its close links between theory and applications that have characterized it over the years. In this volume, the chapters by Barron and Barrett; Fishburn; Fryback; Keeney; Moreno, Pericchi, and Kadane; Howard; Phillips; Slovic and Gregory; Winkler; and, above all, von Winterfeldt focus on those links. Decision science originally developed out of concern with real decision problems; and applied work, such as is represented in this volume, will help the field to remain strong.
Chapters (18)
The purpose of this chapter is to compare the descriptive adequacy of alternative theories of decision making. The common consequence paradox of Allais, which is evidence against expected utility theory, can be interpreted as a joint test of branch independence (a weaker version of Savage’s axiom), coalescing (equal outcomes can be combined by adding their probabilities), and transitivity. Thus, this paradox can be explained in several ways. One class of theories (including subjectively weighted utility theory and original prospect theory) retains branch independence but violates coalescing, and thereby violates stochastic dominance. Another class of theories (rank-dependent and rank- and sign-dependent utility theories including cumulative prospect theory) retains coalescing and stochastic dominance but violates branch independence. New independence properties, distribution independence and cumulative independence, are proposed to test original prospect theory and cumulative prospect theory. Violations of distribution independence refute original prospect theory and a multiplicative configurai weight model. Experimental results also show violations of cumulative independence and stochastic dominance, contrary to rank-dependent utility theories, including cumulative prospect theory. Empirical results are consistent with a weight tax configurai weight model that accounts for the Allais paradoxes, violations of branch and distribution independence, violations of cumulative independence, violations and satisfactions of stochastic dominance, and violations of coalescing.
Triggered by the seminal work of Ward Edwards in the 1950s, the assumption of rationality in decision making as defined in the rational expectations model embraced by economics and other social sciences has come under scrutiny over the last fourty years. Closer inspection has frequently found it lacking in descriptive accuracy. As Edwards pointed out as early as 1954, “it is easy for a psychologist to [show] that an economic man… is very unlike a real man” (p. 382). The general public tends to agree and has not been surprised by the failure of this type of rationality to explain behavior. Thus the novelist Smiley (1995) has one of her characters describe a microeconomics lecture on the topic as “rollicking tales about an entirely alien planet, the Bizarro Planet, home of Bizarro Superman” (p. 141).
The construct of utility has a long history in the social sciences. In the eighteenth century, Bernoulli (1738/1968) used the term to refer to a riskless construct associated with wealth. He noted that “a gain of one thousand ducats is more significant to a pauper than to a rich man, though both gain the same amount” (p.24). To capture this intuition, Bernoulli proposed the idea of diminishing marginal utility. Bentham (1823/1968) later discussed utility in hedonic terms of pleasure and pain. During this period, utility represented the subjective value, moral worth, or pleasure associated with an outcome. Then, in 1947, von Neumann and Morgenstern deduced the principle of maximizing expected utility from a set of preference axioms. Within this framework, utility is a risky construct linked to the satisfaction with an outcome in a decision context.
Psychological studies involving experts date back to the earliest days of experimental psychology. Research on domain experts has also been a fundamental part of the history of judgment and decision making (JDM). The purpose of this chapter is to look at how domain experts have been viewed in the decision making literature. The focus will be on an unappreciated historical bias derived from a misinterpretation of the foundations of experimental psychology.
In 1954 and 1961 Ward Edwards published two seminal articles that created behavioral decision research as a new field of study in psychology (Edwards, 1954, 1961). The topics of this research include how people make decisions and how these decisions can be improved with tools and training. Behavioral decision research has been conducted in two distinct paradigms: the cognitive illusions paradigm and the engineering psychology paradigm. Both are, in different ways, relevant to decision analysis.
Scoring rules provide overall measures of the “goodness” of probabilities, and other measures (often from decompositions of scoring rules) relate to specific attributes such as calibration and sharpness. This paper briefly reviews scoring rules and probability evaluation and attempts to extend past work in two directions. The first extension generalizes the development of scoring rules that better reflect the difficulty of forecasting situations and the skill associated with probability forecasts, with the goal of obtaining measures that yield comparable scores. The second extension involves the use of scoring rules to evaluate probabilities without perfect knowledge of the actual outcomes of the events or variables to which the probabilities refer. This is in the spirit of attempting to create a level playing field for probability evaluation by making evaluation measures comparable and expanding the set of probabilities that can be evaluated.
We analyze the pioneering work on the theory of precise measurement of Edwards, Lindman and Savage (1963) in light of some recent developments in the theory of robust Bayesian analysis. The key points of the former are the concept of “actual” prior and bounds for the errors when replacing the actual prior by a uniform prior. The class of “actual” priors is characterized as a band of probability measures and the above bounds are improved.
Stimulated by curiosity as well as by necessity, we undertake studies of various phenomena and the processes that seem to produce them. Our initial explanations of the process by which some phenomenon is produced may often be oversimplified or possibly entirely mistaken. But, as our research continues we begin to recognize more elements of this process and the manner in which they appear to interact in producing the phenomenon of interest. In other words, as discovery lurches forward we begin to capture more of what we might regard as complexities or subtleties involving these elements and their interactions. In the last decade or so there has been growing interest in the study of complexity itself. Research in what has been called the science of complexity [Waldrop, 1992, 9; Casti,1994, 269-274] has brought together persons from many disciplines who, in the past, might not have been so congenial to the thought of collaborating. At present there are various accounts of what complexity means and how it emerges. In some studies it is observed that simple processes can produce complex phenomena; in others, it is observed that what we often regard as simple phenomena are the result of complex processes. But these observations are not new by any means. Years ago Poincare observed [1905, 147]:
Barron and Barrett, 1996(b) demonstrate empirically that a surrogate weight vector, rank order centroid (ROC) weights, based only on ranked swing weights, is surprisingly efficacious in general in selecting a best multi-attribute alternative. An Excel-based simulation, EMAR, allows one to assess the applicability of the general result to any particular value matrix. In this paper we extend EMAR to partial information sets of weights other than a strict ranking. We also apply these procedures to examine the effect of reducing the number of attributes.
This paper extends research originally concerned with the life, death, and safety decisions of an individual [1,2,3,4,5] to the case of a couple, two people who have a mutual interest in each other’s well-being. The original work showed how the question of placing a value on life was improperly framed. The inadequacy of the frame appears when we observe that few, if any, people would exchange their lives for any sum of money. We shall begin with a review of the case for the individual, and then extend it to the case of a couple. As we shall see, analyzing the case of a couple introduces several factors unique to that case, including the issue of how to combine both individual and mutual interests.
Robot labor is desirable for many mundane tasks, yet there are also numerous potential robot services that are not currently commercially available, including road-based delivery; industry and residential cleaning; and building and grounds maintenance. Robots can be built that can physically perform the actions necessary to do these services, but the requisite robot vision capabilities are not adequate to perform these tasks safely and reliably in open, uncontrolled environments.
Public values and public policy are intertwined in a complex manner. The intent of this paper is to investigate some of those relationships and suggest how we should prescriptively address them to enhance the quality of public policy decisions. Part of my interest concerns the use of public values for setting public policy. A lot of research has addressed this problem, such as how to determine public values and how to use them appropriately to establish public policy (e.g. Edwards, 1977). The other part of my interest, which traditionally has not been addressed, concerns how we might use public policy to establish appropriate public values, and what might be the benefits of such an activity.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss historical and current efforts to devise a measure for states of health experienced over time, a field now dominated by the Quality-adjusted Life Year (QALY). Since this review was sparked by an invitation to participate in a festschrift for Ward Edwards, I want to ask an Edwardsian question in the course of the overview: Are we trying to do so good at modeling QALYs that we aren’t getting anywhere at All -- maybe we should just get on with it in a simple fashion?
The practice of risk analysis has steadily increased in prominence during the past several decades, as risk managers in government and industry seek to develop more effective ways to meet public demands for a safer and healthier environment. Dozens of scientific disciplines have been mobilized to provide technical information about risk, and billions of dollars have been expended to create this information and distill it in the context of risk assessments.
An unprecedented era in the development of decision theory occurred from the late 1940s to the early 1950s and culminated with an extraordinary number of important publications in 1954. This paper traces the background for this coming-of-age era through Ward Edwards’ 1954 review article, outlines other contributions of that year, accounts for the era’s creative surge, and sketches its effects on succeeding decades.
A major international forum for behavioral decision research is the biennial conference on Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making. ‘sPUDM’ began in Hamburg on April 10–12, 1969, as a Research Conference on Subjective Probability, and it adopted its current name only at the third conference, in 1971 at London’s Brunei University in Uxbridge. Actually SPUDM was just another expression of the big wave of research interests in decision models, methods and processes, that rolled on in the 1950s and 1960s. But SPUDM (originally) was a distinctly European and a mostly psychological response to the growing international literature. In this chapter a description is given of SPUDM’s inception around 1969 and its historical development since then, which is currently manifested in a large and productive meeting every two years (see Note 1). The important role of Ward Edwards’ decision-theoretic reviews in the 1950s and 1960s is indicated, as are the roles of Bruno De Finetti and Masanao Toda. SPUDM’s expansion and professional organization are discussed, and its substantive developments between 1969 and 1997 are briefly sketched. The paper ends with a biographical note on the decision-theoretic roots of Edwards himself.
As anyone familiar with Ward knows, he likes to talk about his research. For this, he needs an audience. It should not be surprising, therefore, to find that Ward has always been eager to help create organizations that sponsor meetings at which decision scientists can talk with one another. This brief chapter outlines his contributions to the development of six ongoing organizations, plus his efforts to organize one super meeting in 2000.
As its title announces, this volume consists of a collection of papers, each one of which reflects upon one or more contributions Ward Edwards has made to the study of probabilistic inference and choice. I was very pleased when asked to provide an introduction that would contain some reflections about Ward himself. My credential for performing this task includes an association with Ward that goes back 35 years. I was also honored by this request since there are others, some of whom aie contributors to this volume, whose association with Ward goes back at least as long. In another contribution to this volume, I reflect upon the benign influence Ward has always had on my own research. I have seen Ward at various times as a mentor and always as a colleague and friend. Though we have disagreed about various research issues, not one cross word has ever passed between us in all these years. Our arguments about research and other matters have always ended with the two of us dissolving in laughter. I mention these things to alert the reader to the fact that I would not know how to write a dispassionate account of Ward’s background, interests, and accomplishments.
... Although experts have been studied for over a century (Shanteau, 1999), there remains a critical unanswered question ± how can we describe who is, and who is not, an expert? If there is an external criterion (a``gold standard''), the answer is straightforward. ...
... Table 1 lists within-person consistency values from eight prior studies of experts. The four vertical categories correspond to a classi®cation of task diculty proposed by Shanteau (1999). There are two domains listed for each category, with internal consistency correlations. ...
The 'Emerging Perspectives' offers answers by a top group of experts to the question, 'Where is judgment and decision research heading as we forge into the 21st century?' The chapters represent perspectives developed by some of the most innovative thinkers in the field. The book is organized around five themes: Fortifying traditional models of decision making - looking at traditional topics in new ways; Elaborating cognitive processes in decision making - exploring the interplay between decision research and cognitive psychology; Integrating affect and motivation in decision making - relating how affect/motivation interact with decision making; Understanding social and cultural influences on decision making - recognizing the importance of social and cultural context on decisions; Facing the challenge of real-world complexity in decision research - seeing the challenges, and rewards, of research outside the laboratory. The book concludes with a Commentary based on an analysis and synthesis of the new ideas presented here.
... Although experts have been studied for over a century (Shanteau, 1999), there remains a critical unanswered question ± how can we describe who is, and who is not, an expert? If there is an external criterion (a``gold standard''), the answer is straightforward. ...
... Table 1 lists within-person consistency values from eight prior studies of experts. The four vertical categories correspond to a classi®cation of task diculty proposed by Shanteau (1999). There are two domains listed for each category, with internal consistency correlations. ...
The identification of an expert is vital to any study or application involving expertise. If external criterion (a “gold standard”) exists, then identification is straightforward: Simply compare people against the standard and select whoever is closest. However, such criteria are seldom available for domains where experts work; that's why experts are needed in the first place. The purpose here is to explore various methods for identifying experts in the absence of a gold standard. One particularly promising approach (labeled CWS for Cochran–Weiss–Shanteau) is explored in detail. We illustrate CWS through reanalyses of three previous studies of experts. In each case, CWS provided new insights into identifying experts. When applied to auditors, CWS correctly detected group differences in expertise. For agricultural judges, CWS revealed subtle distinctions between subspecialties of experts. In personnel selection, CWS showed that irrelevant attributes were more informative than relevant attributes. We believe CWS provides a valuable tool for identification and evaluation of experts.
... Discovery clearly involves seeing the world differently-perhaps even seeing things in a way that no one has seen them before. Surely curiosity is at the root of this approach to thinking [Schum, 1999]. Therefore, it seems prudent to stimulate curiosity in assessing evidence the commander must shape into a hypothesis about some current situation or future action. ...
... As Schum points out, "…new hypotheses are generated from combinations of trifles. We might observe there to be something significant about the joint consideration of certain trifles that goes well beyond the significance of these same trifles when they are considered separately" [Schum, 1999]. Note the use of the words "combination" and "joint"-these are key components of emergence and complex systems. ...
Military commanders face challenges that their counterparts in the business world would confront only in the rarest of circumstances. Commanders must make decisions that place their human and equipment resources in harm's way. When a commander or senior civilian military decision-maker must commit to an action that endangers the lives of his or her troops, their decisions and the information or evidence that supports their decisions take on a life of their own. The decision-making process becomes complex and adaptive by nature. Like trial lawyers, judges and juries, the commander and staff must weigh evidence about adversary and environments' capabilities and limitations. This evidence faces different tests for the commander than those of the legal community. The judge and jury can rigorously pursue the evidence to a final conclusion where the commander must often act quickly and precisely on totally incomplete evidence. The judge and jury make decisions on criminal matters that "only"...
... As illustrated in section 3.3, Mosteller and Nogee had discussed the possibility that subjective and objective probabilities may not coincide. Ward Edwards, another of Mosteller's Ph.D. students in psychology at Harvard, investigated the issue further (on Edwards, see Shanteau, Mellers, and Schum 1999). In his doctoral dissertation and a series of papers derived from it, Edwards (1953Edwards ( , 1954aEdwards ( , 1954b presented experimental results confirming that bettors harbor subjective probabilities that are at odds with objective probabilities. ...
The paper studies the origin, content and impact of two experiments to measure the utility of money. The first experiment was performed between 1948 and 1949 by F. Mosteller and P. Nogee, and grew directly out of Mosteller’s discussions with M. Friedman and L.J. Savage. The second was carried out in 1954 by D. Davidson, P. Suppes, and S. Siegel. Both experiments relied on expected utility theory (EUT), and both groups of experimenters concluded that their findings supported the measurability of utility as well as EUT.
For a number of reasons, the two experiments provide a case study that illuminates the interaction between economics and psychology in the 1940s and 1950s. First, their designs exhibit a tension between the economic image of human agency associated with EUT, and insights from experimental psychology research that were in contrast with EUT’s assumptions. Second, both experiments were performed by psychologists and other non-economists, and the paper reconstructs how their authors became interested in measuring the utility of money. Third, the paper shows that the psychological insights contained in the designs of the two experiments found some application between 1955 and 1965, but were quickly forgotten afterwards. Only in the 1970s, when robust experimental evidence against EUT accumulated, were economists compelled to re-consider those psychological insights.
... We know from over 40 years of judgment research in fields such as psychology and medicine, and our own work (Davies et al., 2011;Harries and Gilhooly, 2010;Unsworth, 2001), that decision-makers are inconsistent in their judgments, often have limited insight as to how they make judgments and disagree over judgments made (Shanteau et al., 1999). However, we also know it is possible to statistically model how decisions are made, identify the optimal judgment policies that produce these decisions and use these to improve decision-making capacity. ...
Introduction:
As people with a range of disabilities strive to increase their community mobility, occupational therapy driver assessors are increasingly required to make complex recommendations regarding fitness-to-drive. However, very little is known about how therapists use information to make decisions. The aim of this study was to model how experienced occupational therapy driver assessors weight and combine information when making fitness-to-drive recommendations and establish their level of decision agreement.
Method:
Using Social Judgment Theory method, this study examined how 45 experienced occupational therapy driver assessors from the UK, Australia and New Zealand made fitness-to-drive recommendations for a series of 64 case scenarios. Participants completed the task on a dedicated website, and data were analysed using discriminant function analysis and an intraclass correlation coefficient.
Results:
Accounting for 87% of the variance, the cues central to the fitness-to-drive recommendations made by assessors are the client's physical skills, cognitive and perceptual skills, road law craft skills, vehicle handling skills and the number of driving instructor interventions. Agreement (consensus) between fitness-to-drive recommendations was very high: intraclass correlation coefficient = .97, 95% confidence interval .96-.98).
Conclusion:
Findings can be used by both experienced and novice driver assessors to reflect on and strengthen the fitness-to-drive recommendations made to clients.
... Furthermore, people consistently make choices as though utilities or consequences of our actions are a nonlinear function of outcomes of interest 60,61 . This explains, for example, why a gain of $100 is valued more by a pauper than by a millionaire 29 . ...
... Given a set of alternatives, a set of consequences, and a correspondence between those sets, decision theory offers conceptually simple procedures for guiding choice. Histories of the development of decision theory can be found in Zeckhauser et al (1996), Shanteau et al (1999), Raiffa (2002), and Morton and Phillips (2009). ...
Social science disciplines have used decision theory and game theory to provide metaphorical understanding and analytical rigour in their particular domains. The paper explores whether a similar perspective can be applied to operational research (OR) in order to provide an integrating theme for both theory and practice. It is argued that, while the methods of OR are instrumentally rational, OR interventions embrace non-instrumental aspects as well. A case study of an application of decision theory is described and analysed from a decision and game theory (DGT) perspective. The case demonstrates that although the model developed was instrumental, the structure and content of the model reflected the normative and communicative aspects of the decision context. The paper concludes that OR could use a DGT perspective as a conceptual framework for the teaching, research and practice of OR.
The context of the work presented in this article is the assessment and automated evaluation of human behaviour. To facilitate this, a formalism is presented which is unambiguous as well as such that it can be implemented and interpreted in an automated manner. In the greater scheme of things, comparable behaviour evaluation requires comparable assessment scenarios and, to this end, computer games are considered as controllable and abstract environments. Within this context, a model for behavioural AI is presented which was designed around the objectives of: (a) being able to play rationally; (b) adhering to formally stated behaviour preferences; and (c) ensuring that very specific circumstances can be forced to arise within a game. The presented work is based on established models from the field of behavioural psychology, formal logic as well as approaches from game theory and related fields. The suggested model for behavioural AI has been used to implement and test a game, as well as AI players that exhibit specific behavioural preferences. The overall aim of this article is to enable the readers to design their own AI implementation, using the formalisms and models they prefer and to a level of complexity they desire.
Decision analysis is a prescriptive theory that aids individuals or groups confronted with complex problems in a wide variety of contexts. By framing issues, identifying risks, eliciting stakeholder preferences, and suggesting alternative approaches, decision analysts can offer workable solutions in domains such as the environment, health and medicine, engineering and operations research, and public policy. This book is a mixture of historical and forward-looking essays on key topics in decision analysis. Part I covers the history and foundations of decision analysis. Part II discusses structuring decision problems, including the development of objectives and their attributes, and influence diagrams. Part III discusses probabilities and their elicitation and Bayes nets. Part IV discusses additive and multiplicative utilities, risk preferences, and 'option pricing' methods. Part V discusses risk analysis. Part VI puts decision analysis in a behavioral and organizational context. Part VII presents case studies of applications.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
He who deliberates lengthily will not always choose the best.
– Goethe
Introspection is often considered a uniquely human capability. Other species possess sophisticated cognitive and communicative skills (e.g., Premack & Premack, 1983; Ristau & Robbins, 1982), but as far as we know, we are the only species that thinks about its thoughts and feelings. Given the possibly unique status of our ability to self-reflect, it is tempting to view self-reflection as a uniformly beneficial activity. This assumption has been made, at least implicitly, by theorists in several areas of psychology. Many forms of psychotherapy view introspection as an integral part of the healing process, and some decision theorists argue that reflection about a choice will lead to better decision making (e.g., Janis & Mann, 1977; Koriat, Lichtenstein, & Fischhoff, 1980; Raiffa, 1968). Similarly, Langer (1978, 1989) has argued that we would be better off in most contexts if we were more “mindful” and contemplative about our actions.
Introspection and self-reflection undoubtedly can be very useful, with the ability to superimpose reason and discretion on otherwise impulsive actions. There is no reason to assume that introspection is always beneficial, however, and in fact, there may be times when it is best to avoid too much of it. There is a growing literature documenting the drawbacks of self-reflection and rumination. Morrow and Nolan-Hoeksema (1990) found that people who ruminated about a negative mood were less successful in improving their moods than people who performed a distracting task.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
One of the main themes that has emerged from behavioral decision research during the past three decades is the view that people's preferences are often constructed in the process of elicitation. This idea is derived from studies demonstrating that normatively equivalent methods of elicitation (e.g., choice and pricing) give rise to systematically different responses. These preference reversals violate the principle of procedure invariance that is fundamental to all theories of rational choice. If different elicitation procedures produce different orderings of options, how can preferences be defined and in what sense do they exist? This book shows not only the historical roots of preference construction but also the blossoming of the concept within psychology, law, marketing, philosophy, environmental policy, and economics. Decision making is now understood to be a highly contingent form of information processing, sensitive to task complexity, time pressure, response mode, framing, reference points, and other contextual factors.
Communication researchers have deplored the absence of theory-driven criteria of argument quality in persuasion. Probabilistic Persuasion Theory (PPT) aims to offer theoretical criteria which define the quality of arguments, a priori. Past experimental research tested the validity and distinctiveness of cues as argument quality criteria. Drawing on semantic network theory, the present research introduces two new criteria of argument quality—attribute degree centrality and attribute tie strength. Analyses of semantic network data collected on over-the-ear headphones attributes from the environment and cognitive representations are reported. The analysis demonstrates how degree centrality and tie strength can be measured and how semantic networks can be used to distinguish strong and weak arguments.
Background/objectives:
Dietitians need to prioritise referrals in order to manage their work load. Novice dietitians may not receive training on prioritisation and could be helped with an evidence-based, effective decision-making training tool. To develop such a tool, it is necessary to understand how experts make prioritisation decisions. This study aimed to model expert decision-making policy for prioritising dietetic referrals in adult acute-care services.
Methods/subjects:
Social judgement theory was used to model expert decision-making policy. Informational cues and cue levels were identified. A set of case scenarios that replicated dietetic referrals in adult acute services were developed using fractional factorial design approach. Experienced dietitians were asked to make prioritisation decisions on case scenarios. A model was derived using multiple regression analysis to elicit the weighting given to cues and cue levels by the experts when making prioritisation decisions.
Results:
Six cues and 21 cue levels were identified, and 60 unique case scenarios were created. Fifty experienced dietitians made decisions on these case scenarios. The 'reason for referral' and 'biochemistry picture' were the two most influential cues, and 'weight history' was the least significant. 'Nutritional status', 'presenting complaint' and 'previous food intake' had similar weightings. In all, 95.7% of the variability in the experts' average judgement (adjusted R(2)=0.93) was predicted by the 6 cues.
Conclusions:
A model for referral prioritisation in adult acute services described experienced dietitians' decision-making policy. This can be used to develop training materials that may increase the effectiveness and quality of prioritisation judgements.European Journal of Clinical Nutrition advance online publication, 23 August 2017; doi:10.1038/ejcn.2017.123.
A major international forum for behavioral decision research is the biennial conference on Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making. ‘sPUDM’ began in Hamburg on April 10–12, 1969, as a Research Conference on Subjective Probability, and it adopted its current name only at the third conference, in 1971 at London’s Brunei University in Uxbridge. Actually SPUDM was just another expression of the big wave of research interests in decision models, methods and processes, that rolled on in the 1950s and 1960s. But SPUDM (originally) was a distinctly European and a mostly psychological response to the growing international literature. In this chapter a description is given of SPUDM’s inception around 1969 and its historical development since then, which is currently manifested in a large and productive meeting every two years (see Note 1). The important role of Ward Edwards’ decision-theoretic reviews in the 1950s and 1960s is indicated, as are the roles of Bruno De Finetti and Masanao Toda. SPUDM’s expansion and professional organization are discussed, and its substantive developments between 1969 and 1997 are briefly sketched. The paper ends with a biographical note on the decision-theoretic roots of Edwards himself.
Decision analysis emerged as a discipline separate from decision theory or operations research following World War II. It could not have emerged earlier. It required a stable society with the appropriate philosophy and culture, and a sufficiently rich mathematical language to think logically about decision making. It required the understanding of subjective probability of Ramsey (1926) and de Finetti (1931, 1937), and the appropriate measure of preference under uncertainty of von Neumann and Morgenstern (1947) and later of Savage (1954). It formally came into being with the naming by Howard and his merger of decision theory and systems analysis (1966).
A major concern in management has been to understand and improve decision making. Various approaches have been proposed by psychologists, most based on a "divide-and-conquer" strategy. This strategy – also labeled "problem decomposition" – involves breaking a large decision problem into smaller parts. The idea is not new: In a "Letter to Joseph Priestly," Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to describe a decomposition strategy. The theoretical justification for this approach was outlined by Simon (1957) in his account of "bounded rationality." This concept says that cognitive processing limitations leave humans with little option but to construct simplified mental models of the world. As Simon (p. 198) put it, a person "behaves rationally with respect to this model . . . (although) such behavior is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world." There have been two approaches to management decision making (Huber, 1980). The first is concerned with development and application of normative decision rules based on formal logic derived from economics or statistics. The second involves descriptive accounts of how people actually go about making judgments, decisions, and choices.
Ron Howard is recognizedas a pioneer in the fields of Markov decision processes and the general field of decision analysis
(DA), a term that he introduced. In a series of papers published in the 1960s, Ron laid out the principles of applied decision
theory and brought the techniques of practical DA to various audiences, especially operations research (OR) and engineering.
He furthered the application of DA by combining his academic teaching objectives with the founding of the first DA management
consulting organization.
The concept of risk acceptance is defined, analysed and applied within a recently developed statistical framework for non‐expected utility theory (non‐EU) based on conceptions of status quo‐dependent decision making under uncertainty. First, an outline of this framework is given, and its possible extension to decisions with multiple objectives is discussed. Explicit definitions of various risk acceptance attitudes are introduced, the exact probability‐dependent utility function is derived, and basic properties of marginally acceptable risk are discussed along with examples and applications. These include, among other things, the observed variability of risk acceptance attitudes, voluntary and involuntary risk‐taking, aversion to catastrophic risks with low probabilities but large potentials for damage, and observed societal attitudes toward technological risks. The results indicate that basic risk acceptance patterns familiar from psychometric and social studies of risk are, to some considerable extent, utility‐oriented attitudes. Their notorious variability can be attributed, in systematic ways, to varying ‘pragmatic’ constraints on decision making, notably the aspirations, prospects and extant exposure to risk (status quo, economic and other) of decision makers. The final section emphasizes the significance of the non‐EU results for risk management practices. Methodological issues connected with the interpretation of observed patterns of individual and societal risk bearing in terms of utility maximization will also be addressed.
Ward Edwards' contributions to behavioral decision theory and decision analysis are remembered, as are his contributions to the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS and this journal. The lead article of the issue, by Gregory, Fischhoff, and McDaniels, notes that applications of decision analysis to public-process decision making would benefit from improved linages between psychological and analytical approaches. Other contributions include Bayesian models for combining expert opinions, an empirical study of risk taking in sequential decision making, and applications to environmental management and the sport of curling.
In 1959, LJ Savage attended a statistics seminar held in his honour at the University of London, confronting those present with a radically different approach to reasoning about uncertainty. Britain was well placed to respond to Savage, as very similar ideas had been laid out in Britain a full generation earlier, and in the next few decades, British and British-based practitioners and researchers championed a collection of techniques for thinking quantitatively about uncertainty (which we call 'Probabilistic Decision Analysis'), developing practice, and contributing to theoretic knowledge about the underlying psychology and mathematics. This effectively turned a collection of purely theoretical ideas into a practical modelling technology. In the first decade of the 21st century, some 50 years on, these ideas have made a noticeable influence on practice and thinking in various domains, but numerous challenges still remain.
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