Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases [Paperback]

Daniel Kahneman (Editor), Paul Slovic (Editor), Amos Tversky (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521284147 | ISBN-13: 978-0521284141 | Publication Date: April 30, 1982 | Edition: 1

The thirty-five chapters in this book describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments but in important social, medical, and political situations as well. Individual chapters discuss the representativeness and availability heuristics, problems in judging covariation and control, overconfidence, multistage inference, social perception, medical diagnosis, risk perception, and methods for correcting and improving judgments under uncertainty. About half of the chapters are edited versions of classic articles; the remaining chapters are newly written for this book. Most review multiple studies or entire subareas of research and application rather than describing single experimental studies. This book will be useful to a wide range of students and researchers, as well as to decision makers seeking to gain insight into their judgments and to improve them.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The papers chosen for this volume are an excellent collection, generally well-written and fascinating." Journal of Economic Literature

"The examples are lively, the style is engaging, and it is as entertaining as it is enlightening." Times Literary Supplement

"...an important and well-written book." Journal of the American Statistical Association

"...a good collection of papers on an important topic." Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

"Clearly, this is an important book. Anyone who undertakes judgment and decision research should own it." Contemporary Psychology

Book Description

Thirty-five chapters describe various judgmental heuristics and the biases they produce, not only in laboratory experiments, but in important social, medical, and political situations as well. Most review multiple studies or entire subareas rather than describing single experimental studies.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (April 30, 1982)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521284147
• ISBN-13: 978-0521284141
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #105,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #4 in Books > Computers & Technology > Computer Science > Artificial Intelligence > Heuristic & Constrained Search

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Our biases over-ride our rational appraisal. An important volume from Kahneman and Tversky., January 10, 2006

By 

D. Stuart "Researcher at Kudos" (Auckland NZ) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Paperback)

In this volume Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky gathered together 35 authoritative papers that demonstrate through well-designed experiments and through observation the hard-wired biases and heuristics that influence (or define) the way humans go about making choices when the outcomes are from certain.

There are a raft of biases, and just one example is the Anchoring Effect. If you asked 100 people to guess the population of Turkey, what you'd probably get is a wide range of answers. If you broke the question into two parts: first by asking whether the population is higher or lower than 14 million - and then by asking the respondents to guess the population - you'd find that the answers would gravitate around our arbitrary 14 million mark.

The Heuristics we use to weigh up and evaluate data provide a second family of biases. Here, the human brain is shown to go about problem evaluation along certain pathways and shortcuts, and the route we take tends to define where we'll emerge. By way of example, we tend to give undue weight to highly retrievable or available data: and treat this as representative. So in the wake of Katrina, you or I would be fairly excused for judging 2005 as a particularly bad year for global weather-related disasters. In probability, 2005 was not particularly unusual on a global scale.

This volume is an important collection of papers, with relevance to anyone working in fields where decision-making is at the core. You might be in market research, medicine, social sciences, economics or other fields: this book contains material of direct relevance to your work. The conclusions from the papers range from disturbing (the judgments of professional medical and psychological experts, we see, can be alarmingly biased!) through to illuminating.

Just as gamblers feel sure that after throwing six heads in a row, the coin is "overdue" to throw tails (as if coins have a memory) even professionals have an amazing propensity to run roughshod over their own understanding of probability.

This book makes for serious reading and delivers good value. It makes an absorbing, more focused twin-volume with CHOICES, VALUES & FRAMES which I'd say, however, is a more important book that encompasses much of the thinking here. I've take a star off here because some papers are written not in plain English but rather in densely mathematical language. I work in statistics, but our English language is quite adequate for the task of telling the story, isn't it? For this reason readers of this volume will appreciate the incredibly readable, yet hugely informative, volume "The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making" by Scott Plous. I refer frequently to both these volumes and find both extremely useful.

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars my humble opinion, April 27, 2004

By 

Tyler Markowsky (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Paperback)

Of course, my humble opinion relative to Nobel award committee will hold little intrinsic value, other than a layman's interpretation and application.

An economist myself, I found this book very interesting and educational to read. Although the book is quite verbose, the fluidity and organization of the content facilitates a smooth read - not a bludgeoning of the mind.

I found this book particularly applicable to research in market behavior, systemic analysis (because this book outlines the individuals and how they act within the system); even policy development (uncertainty).

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in psychology, social psychology, economics, policy, and politics.

Regards,
Tyler Markowsky

82 of 102 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the best book I've ever seen about probability., October 20, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (Paperback)

I've never seen better explanations of how probabilities should be calculated. And the book is fascinating -- especially what the authors describe about the results of surveys designed to reveal the most common mistakes people make when estimating probabilities.