Delia Baldassarri
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199828241
- eISBN:
- 9780199979783
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199828241.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
Voting distills a complex decision into a deceptively simple action. The electorate faces a messy tangle of parties, leaders, and issues. How is it possible for voters to unravel it all? How do they ...
More
Voting distills a complex decision into a deceptively simple action. The electorate faces a messy tangle of parties, leaders, and issues. How is it possible for voters to unravel it all? How do they perceive the political landscape? How, in short, do voters choose? Not only is voting a complex choice, but voters themselves also vary widely in their degree of interest, and involvement in politics. This book provides a new understanding of how voting works by focusing on how choices are made given the cognitive limitations of the human mind and the environment in which decision making takes place. Drawing on recent advances in the study of cognitive psychology, decision making, and political cognition, this book provides a careful empirical examination of the strategies voters actually use to manage the complexity of political choice. Expressly rejecting the prevailing one-size-fits-all, “what a rational voter should do” approach, it distinguishes voters based on the cognitive shortcuts, or heuristics, they use to simplify the decision-making process. Drawing on survey data from the 1990s Italian national general elections, the book identifies four types of voters, classified by how they perceive and organize the political debate—from those who capably rely on nuanced ideological categories to those who, skeptical about all-things-political, prove easy prey for television broadcasters. The typology allows us to grasp the actual differences in political sophistication among citizens and to understand which factors are most important to different types of voters. The book helps us make sense of the various ways in which citizens themselves make sense of—and make “simple”—the complex world of politics.Less
Voting distills a complex decision into a deceptively simple action. The electorate faces a messy tangle of parties, leaders, and issues. How is it possible for voters to unravel it all? How do they perceive the political landscape? How, in short, do voters choose? Not only is voting a complex choice, but voters themselves also vary widely in their degree of interest, and involvement in politics. This book provides a new understanding of how voting works by focusing on how choices are made given the cognitive limitations of the human mind and the environment in which decision making takes place. Drawing on recent advances in the study of cognitive psychology, decision making, and political cognition, this book provides a careful empirical examination of the strategies voters actually use to manage the complexity of political choice. Expressly rejecting the prevailing one-size-fits-all, “what a rational voter should do” approach, it distinguishes voters based on the cognitive shortcuts, or heuristics, they use to simplify the decision-making process. Drawing on survey data from the 1990s Italian national general elections, the book identifies four types of voters, classified by how they perceive and organize the political debate—from those who capably rely on nuanced ideological categories to those who, skeptical about all-things-political, prove easy prey for television broadcasters. The typology allows us to grasp the actual differences in political sophistication among citizens and to understand which factors are most important to different types of voters. The book helps us make sense of the various ways in which citizens themselves make sense of—and make “simple”—the complex world of politics.
Peter Carruthers
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199207077
- eISBN:
- 9780191708909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199207077.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter lays out the main arguments supporting massive modularity and explicates the notion of ‘module’ that those arguments support (which is significantly weaker than on Fodor’s influential ...
More
This chapter lays out the main arguments supporting massive modularity and explicates the notion of ‘module’ that those arguments support (which is significantly weaker than on Fodor’s influential account). It argues that modularity is a property of biological systems quite generally, and of animal minds in particular. It also defends the viability of evolutionary psychology as a scientific research program. The chapter criticizes Fodor’s argument that encapsulated forms of modularity are a requirement of computational tractability, arguing that the latter can be assured through the use of various kinds of cognitive heuristic.Less
This chapter lays out the main arguments supporting massive modularity and explicates the notion of ‘module’ that those arguments support (which is significantly weaker than on Fodor’s influential account). It argues that modularity is a property of biological systems quite generally, and of animal minds in particular. It also defends the viability of evolutionary psychology as a scientific research program. The chapter criticizes Fodor’s argument that encapsulated forms of modularity are a requirement of computational tractability, arguing that the latter can be assured through the use of various kinds of cognitive heuristic.
Laurie R. Santos and Venkat Lakshminarayanan
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195332834
- eISBN:
- 9780199868117
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195332834.003.0015
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter explores the possibility that human judgment and decision-making heuristics may have an innate component. It begins by providing a brief review of this heuristic approach, exploring what ...
More
This chapter explores the possibility that human judgment and decision-making heuristics may have an innate component. It begins by providing a brief review of this heuristic approach, exploring what little is known about the role of experience in the emergence of these biases over the course of human development. It then reviews how a comparative-developmental approach allows us to address directly which aspects of our heuristics are innate, universal, and evolutionarily ancient. It adopts insights from comparative cognition to investigate origins of two classic judgmental biases — loss aversion and reference dependence. It presents evidence that humans and nonhumans exhibit analogous judgmental biases previously thought to be uniquely human, and further argues that these shared behaviours result from a common and possibly innate ancestry. The chapter concludes by postulating that examining the innateness of seemingly maladaptive behaviours such as reference dependence and loss aversion may provide insight into the psychological machinery that drives both accurate and biased decision-making.Less
This chapter explores the possibility that human judgment and decision-making heuristics may have an innate component. It begins by providing a brief review of this heuristic approach, exploring what little is known about the role of experience in the emergence of these biases over the course of human development. It then reviews how a comparative-developmental approach allows us to address directly which aspects of our heuristics are innate, universal, and evolutionarily ancient. It adopts insights from comparative cognition to investigate origins of two classic judgmental biases — loss aversion and reference dependence. It presents evidence that humans and nonhumans exhibit analogous judgmental biases previously thought to be uniquely human, and further argues that these shared behaviours result from a common and possibly innate ancestry. The chapter concludes by postulating that examining the innateness of seemingly maladaptive behaviours such as reference dependence and loss aversion may provide insight into the psychological machinery that drives both accurate and biased decision-making.
Delia Baldassarri
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199828241
- eISBN:
- 9780199979783
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199828241.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
Chapter 2 introduces the conceptual developments of the research on human decision making, an important instrument for understanding how individuals make choices in complex situations characterized ...
More
Chapter 2 introduces the conceptual developments of the research on human decision making, an important instrument for understanding how individuals make choices in complex situations characterized by uncertainty, incomplete information, and limited time. In particular, we will focus on two different approaches to heuristics, Kahneman and Tversky’s “Heuristics and Biases” research program and Gigerenzer and the ABC Research Group’s “Fast and Frugal Heuristics.” Each is a set of decision-making strategies based on the use of a limited amount of information and simple and quick reasoning algorithms. While both approaches constitute a plausible alternative to rational choice models of decision making, the “Heuristic and Biases” approach relies on a “right answer” and is therefore difficult to apply to the study of political decisions. In deciding who to vote for, who to marry, or where to relocate, there is no right answer. The “Fast and Frugal Heuristics” approach, with its focus on satisfacing choice rather than best choice, is better suited for the study of this type of decision making.Less
Chapter 2 introduces the conceptual developments of the research on human decision making, an important instrument for understanding how individuals make choices in complex situations characterized by uncertainty, incomplete information, and limited time. In particular, we will focus on two different approaches to heuristics, Kahneman and Tversky’s “Heuristics and Biases” research program and Gigerenzer and the ABC Research Group’s “Fast and Frugal Heuristics.” Each is a set of decision-making strategies based on the use of a limited amount of information and simple and quick reasoning algorithms. While both approaches constitute a plausible alternative to rational choice models of decision making, the “Heuristic and Biases” approach relies on a “right answer” and is therefore difficult to apply to the study of political decisions. In deciding who to vote for, who to marry, or where to relocate, there is no right answer. The “Fast and Frugal Heuristics” approach, with its focus on satisfacing choice rather than best choice, is better suited for the study of this type of decision making.
Susan P. Shapiro
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780226615608
- eISBN:
- 9780226615882
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226615882.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
This chapter considers the role of law in the ICU and presents the legal and bioethical scripts for surrogate decision making. It describes legal provisions for advance directives that specify the ...
More
This chapter considers the role of law in the ICU and presents the legal and bioethical scripts for surrogate decision making. It describes legal provisions for advance directives that specify the patient’s wishes and/or decision maker and the criteria for the selection of a default surrogate when no decision maker was appointed. The chapter reviews the bioethical standards which surrogates should follow when deciding for another—beginning with the patient’s explicit instructions and, when they are unknown, substituted judgments of the patient’s wishes, followed by the patient’s best interests—as well as the evidentiary rules to guide surrogate judgments. Surrogates encounter many difficulties following these scripts in the real world, even as so many families and health care providers don’t even know that they exist. One of those difficulties results from the impossibility of truly knowing another’s wishes, another from conflicts of interest at the bedside which are inevitable when loved ones, with the most to gain or lose, are entrusted with life-and-death decisions. Yet another reflects the heuristic and cognitive biases that compromise the judgments of physicians and decision makers alike. The chapter concludes by reviewing the challenges of implementing law at the bedside.Less
This chapter considers the role of law in the ICU and presents the legal and bioethical scripts for surrogate decision making. It describes legal provisions for advance directives that specify the patient’s wishes and/or decision maker and the criteria for the selection of a default surrogate when no decision maker was appointed. The chapter reviews the bioethical standards which surrogates should follow when deciding for another—beginning with the patient’s explicit instructions and, when they are unknown, substituted judgments of the patient’s wishes, followed by the patient’s best interests—as well as the evidentiary rules to guide surrogate judgments. Surrogates encounter many difficulties following these scripts in the real world, even as so many families and health care providers don’t even know that they exist. One of those difficulties results from the impossibility of truly knowing another’s wishes, another from conflicts of interest at the bedside which are inevitable when loved ones, with the most to gain or lose, are entrusted with life-and-death decisions. Yet another reflects the heuristic and cognitive biases that compromise the judgments of physicians and decision makers alike. The chapter concludes by reviewing the challenges of implementing law at the bedside.