Judgment and Decision Making: An Interdisciplinary Reader (Cambridge Series on Judgment and Decision Making) [Paperback]

Terry Connolly (Editor), Hal R. Arkes (Editor), Kenneth R. Hammond (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521626021 | ISBN-13: 978-0521626026 | Publication Date: December 28, 1999 | Edition: 2

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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The three papers in this section are excellent...In this highly readable paper, Dawes draws on examples from a number of disparate fields to discuss the well known, though surprising, finding that simple weighted means of predictor variables produce more accurate forecasts than experts who are basing their judgment on the same variables." Internationsl Journal of Forcasting

Book Description

This is a revision of Arkes and Hammond's 1986 collection of papers on judment and decision making. Updated and extended, the focus of this volume is interdisciplinary and applied (in contrast to the companion collection, Goldstein and Hogarth's Research in Judgment and Decision Making, 1997). The papers are selected from scientific literature, but chosen specifically to appeal to the scholar, student and layperson alike.

Product Details

• Paperback: 808 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2 edition (December 28, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521626021
• ISBN-13: 978-0521626026
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #981,499 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Complete Reference Book, August 17, 2000

By 

Dogan Kokdemir - See all my reviews

This review is from: Judgment and Decision Making: An Interdisciplinary Reader (Cambridge Series on Judgment and Decision Making) (Paperback)

Research 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

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The contribution of J M Keynes to decision making is missing, December 15, 2004

By 

Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Judgment and Decision Making: An Interdisciplinary Reader (Cambridge Series on Judgment and Decision Making) (Paperback)

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<w<1.Risk can then be further separated into linear risk and nonlinear risk,which requires Keynes's modified c formula,c=p/(1+q).The fact that Keynes got to the mountain top first before Ellsberg and Tversky-Kahneman does not mean that the forms of analysis developed and applied by Ellsberg and Tversky-Kahneman are unsound.On the contrary,as made clear in this book,they are very sound.However,at the theoretical level,they are not original.What is original is the empirical and experimental evidence accumulated over a 30-40 year period that provides confirmation of their conclusions,as well as those of Keynes.