Thomas Gilovich - Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment

Heuristics and Biases

Is our case strong enough to go to trial? Will interest rates go up? Can I trust this person? Such questions and the judgments required to answer them are woven into the fabric of everyday experience. This book examines how people make such judgments. The study of human judgment was transformed in the 1970s, when Kahneman and Tversky introduced their heuristics and biases approach and challenged the dominance of strictly rational models. Their work highlighted the reflexive mental operations used to make complex problems manageable, and illuminated how the same processes can lead both to accurate and to dangerously flawed judgments. The heuristics and biases framework generated a torrent of influential research in psychology research that reverberated widely and affected scholarship in economics, law, medicine, management, and political science. This book compiles the most influential research in the heuristic and biases tradition since the initial collection of 1982 (by Kahneman, Slovic, and Tversky). The various contributions develop and critically analyze the initial work on heuristics and biases, supplement these initial statements with emerging theory and empirical findings, and extend the reach of the framework to new real-world applications.

Thomas Gilovich is Professor of Psychology at Cornell University and a member of the Cornell Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Research.

Dale Griffin is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.

Daniel Kahneman is Eugene Higgins Professor of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Affairs, Princeton University.

HEURISTICS

AND BIASES

The Psychology of
Intuitive Judgment

Edited by

THOMAS GILOVICH

Cornell University

DALE GRIFFIN

Stanford University

DANIEL KAHNEMAN

Princeton University

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
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Cambridge University Press
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521762608

Cambridge University Press 2002

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2002
8th printing 2009

Printed in the United States of America

A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Heuristics and biases : the psychology of intuitive judgment / edited by Thomas Gilovitch, Dale Griffin, Daniel Kahneman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-521-79260-6 ISBN 0-521-79679-2 (pbk.)

1.Judgment. 2. Reasoning (Psychology). 3.Critical thinking. I. Gilovitch, Thomas. II. Griffin, Dale. III. Kahneman, Daniel, 1934

BF447.H48 2002

ISBN 978-0-521-76260-8 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-79679-8 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or Web sites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

To the memory of Amos Tversky

Contents

Thomas Gilovich and Dale Griffin

Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman

Daniel Kahneman and Shane Frederick

Maya Bar-Hillel and Efrat Neter

Steven J. Sherman, Robert B. Cialdini, Donna F. Schwartzman, and Kim D. Reynolds

Norbert Schwarz and Leigh Ann Vaughn

Gretchen B. Chapman and Eric J. Johnson

Nicholas Epley and Thomas Gilovich

Boaz Keysar and Dale J. Barr

Daniel T. Gilbert

Timothy D. Wilson, David B. Centerbar, and Nancy Brekke

Paul Rozin and Carol Nemeroff

Paul Slovic, Dale Griffin, and Amos Tversky

Dale Griffin and Amos Tversky

Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin, and Michael Ross

J. Frank Yates, Ju-Whei Lee, Winston R. Sieck, Incheol Choi, and Paul C. Price

Daniel T. Gilbert, Elizabeth C. Pinel, Timothy D. Wilson, Stephen J. Blumberg, and Thalia P. Wheatley

Neil D. Weinstein and William M. Klein

David Dunning, Judith A. Meyerowitz, and Amy D. Holzberg

David A. Armor and Shelley E. Taylor

Daniel Kahneman and Dale T. Miller

Dale T. Miller and Brian R. Taylor

Steven A. Sloman

Paul Slovic, Melissa Finucane, Ellen Peters, and Donald G. MacGregor

Keith E. Stanovich and Richard F. West

Amos Tversky and Derek J. Koehler

Yuval Rottenstreich and Amos Tversky

Lyle A. Brenner, Derek J. Koehler, and Yuval Rottenstreich

Richard E. Nisbett, David H. Krantz, Christopher Jepson, and Ziva Kunda

Norbert Schwarz

Shane Frederick

Gerd Gigerenzer, Jean Czerlinski, and Laura Martignon

Philip E. Tetlock

Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky

Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky

Victoria Husted Medvec, Scott F. Madey, and Thomas Gilovich

Emily Pronin, Carolyn Puccio, and Lee Ross

Max Henrion and Baruch Fischhoff

Werner F. M. De Bondt and Richard H. Thaler

Derek J. Koehler, Lyle Brenner, and Dale Griffin

Robyn M. Dawes, David Faust, and Paul E. Meehl

Baruch Fischhoff

Philip E. Tetlock

List of Contributors

David A. Armor

Department of Psychology

Yale University

Maya Bar-Hillel

Department of Psychology

Hebrew University

Dale J. Barr

Department of Psychology

University of Chicago

Stephen J. Blumberg

National Institutes of Health

Nancy Brekke

Department of Psychology

Lake Forest College

Lyle Brenner

School of Management

University of Florida

Roger Buehler

Psychology Department

Wilfrid Laurier University

David B. Centerbar

Department of Psychology

University of Virginia

Gretchen Chapman

Psychology Department

Rutgers University

Incheol Choi

Department of Psychology

Seoul National University

Robert B. Cialdini

Department of Psychology

Arizona State University

Jean Czerlinski

Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Robyn Dawes

Department of Social & Decision Sciences

Carnegie Mellon University

Werner De Bondt

Department of Finance, Investment & Banking

University of Wisconsin Madison

David Dunning

Department of Psychology

Cornell University

Nicholas Epley

Department of Psychology

Harvard University

David Faust

Department of Psychology

University Rhode Island

Melissa Finucane

Decision Research

Baruch Fischhoff

Department of Social & Decision Sciences

Carnegie Mellon University

Shane Frederick

Sloan School of Management

Massachusetts Institute of Technology