The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making (Plous, 1993)

Review
Journal of Marketing : ``Contains a wonderful selection of the classic studies on psychology.''

Book Description
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING offers a comprehensive introduction to the field with a strong focus on the social aspects of decision making processes. Winner of the prestigious William James Book Award, THE PSYCHOLOGY OF JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING is an informative and engaging introduction to the field written in a style that is equally accessible to the introductory psychology student, the lay person, or the professional. A unique feature of this volume is the Reader Survey which readers are to complete before beginning the book. The questions in the Reader Survey are drawn from many of the studies discussed throughout the book, allowing readers to compare their answers with the responses given by people in the original studies. This title is part of The McGraw-Hill Series in Social Psychology.

p.107 When people are faced with a complicated judgment or decision, they often simplify the task by relying on heuristics, or general rules of thumb. In many cases, these shortcuts yield very close approximations to the "optimal" answers suggested by normative theories.

p.109 Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman (1974) have proposed that decision makers use "heuristics," or rules of thumb, to arrive at their judgments. The advantage of heuristics is that they reduce the time and effort required to make reasonably good judgments and decisions.... Normally, heuristics yield fairly good estimates.

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