Baruch Fischhoff - Judgment and Decision Making

I am grateful to Mikey Jones, Alison Kuznets, Ragnar Lfstedt, Charlotte Russell and Rosa Stipanovic for their help in making this volume happen; to my teachers and mentors in the Detroit Public Schools, Wayne State University, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, for providing my education; to the governments and others that supported those institutions and my research; to my family for their love and support; and to all for helping me to see research as a form of public service.

Series editor: Ragnar E. Lfstedt

1. Calculating Political Risk

Catherine Althaus

2. The Citizens at Risk

From Urban Sanitation to Sustainable Cities

Gordon McGranahan, Pedro Jacobi, Jacob

Songsor, Charles Surjadi and Marianne Kjellen

3. The Earthscan Reader on Risk

Edited by Ragnar E. Lfstedt and sa Boholm

4. The Ethics of Technological Risk

Edited by Lotte Asveld and Sabine Roeser

5. Facility Siting

Risk, Power and Identity in Land-Use Planning

Edited by sa Boholm and Ragnar E. Lfstedt

6. The Feeling of Risk

New Perspectives on Risk Perception

Paul Slovic

7. Foresight in Action

The Practice of Dealing with Uncertainty in

Public Policy

Marjolein B. A. van Asselt, Susan A. van t

Klooster, Philip W. F. van Notten and Livia A.

Smits

8. Global Environmental Risk

Jeanne X. Kasperson and Roger E. Kasperson

9. Hazards, Vulnerability and

Environmental Justice

Susan L. Cutter

10. The Perception of Risk

Paul Slovic

11. Public Safety and Risk Assessment

Improving Decision Making

David J. Ball and Laurence Ball-King

12. Risk Governance

Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World

Ortwin Renn

13. Risk Management in Post-Trust Societies

Ragnar E. Lfstedt

14. Risk, Media and Stigma

Understanding Public Challenges to Modern

Science and Technology

Edited by James Flynn, Paul Slovic and Howard

Kunreuther

15. Risk, Uncertainty and Rational Action

Carlo C. Jaeger, Ortwin Renn, Eugene A. Rosa

and Thomas Webler

16. The Social Contours of Risk

(Volumes 1 & 2)

Jeanne X. Kasperson and Roger E. Kasperson

17. Social Trust and the Management of Risk

Edited by George Cvetkovich and Ragnar E. Lfstedt

18. The Spatial Dimension of Risk

How Geography Shapes the Emergence of

Riskscapes

Detlef Mller-Mahn

19. The Tolerability of Risk

A New Framework for Risk Management

Edited by Frdric Bouder, David Slavin and

Ragnar E. Lfstedt

20. Transboundary Risk Governance

Rolf Lidskog, Linda Soneryd and Ylva Uggla

21. Transboundary Risk Management

Edited by Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer, Ragnar E.

Lfstedt and Gunnar Sjstedt

22. Trust in Cooperative Risk Management

Uncertainty and Scepticism in the Public Mind

Michael Siegrist, Timothy C. Earle and Heinz

Gutscher

23. Trust in Risk Management

Uncertainty and Scepticism in the Public Mind

Edited by Michael Siegrist, Timothy C. Earle

and Heinz Gutscher

24. Uncertainty and Risk

Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Edited by Gabriele Bammer and Michael Smithson

25. Judgment and Decision Making

Baruch Fischhoff

26. Risk Analysis and Human Behavior

Baruch Fischhoff

Baruch Fischhoff

2010 J OHN W ILEY AND S ONS , L TD . WIRE S C OGN S CI

The study of judgment and decision making entails three interrelated forms of research: (1) normative analysis , identifying the best courses of action, given decision makers values; (2) descriptive studies , examining actual behavior in terms comparable to the normative analyses; and (3) prescriptive interventions , helping individuals to make better choices, bridging the gap between the normative ideal and the descriptive reality. The research is grounded in analytical foundations shared by economics, psychology, philosophy, and management science. Those foundations provide a framework for accommodating affective and social factors that shape and complement the cognitive processes of decision making. The decision sciences have grown through applications requiring collaboration with subject matter experts, familiar with the substance of the choices and the opportunities for interventions. Over the past half century, the field has shifted its emphasis from predicting choices, which can be successful without theoretical insight, to understanding the processes shaping them. Those processes are often revealed through biases that suggest non-normative processes. The practical importance of these biases depends on the sensitivity of specific decisions and the support that individuals have in making them. As a result, the field offers no simple summary of individuals competence as decision makers, but a suite of theories and methods suited to capturing these sensitivities.

Decisions are easy when decision makers know what they want and what they will get, making choices from a set of well-defined options. Such decisions could be equally easy, but reach different conclusions, for people who see the facts similarly, but have different goals, or for people who have the same values but see the facts differently, or for people who disagree about both facts and values.

Decision making can become more difficult when there is uncertainty about either what will happen or what one wants to happen. Some decisions are so sensitive to estimates of fact or value that it pays to invest in learning, before acting. Other decisions will work out just as well, for any plausible estimates.

Thus, any account of decision-making processes must consider both the decisions and the individuals making them. The field of behavioral decision research provides such accounts. It entails three forms of research: (1) normative , identifying the best possible choice, given the state of the world and decision makers values; (2) descriptive , characterizing how individuals make decisions, in terms comparable to the normative standard; and (3) prescriptive , attempting to close the gap between the normative ideal and the descriptive reality.