David E. Klein and Gregory Mitchell (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- May 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195367584
- eISBN:
- 9780199776917
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195367584.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Forensic Psychology
This volume of essays examines the psychological processes that underlie judicial decision making. Chapters in the first section of the book take as their starting point the fact that judges make ...
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This volume of essays examines the psychological processes that underlie judicial decision making. Chapters in the first section of the book take as their starting point the fact that judges make many of the same judgments and decisions that ordinary people make and consider how our knowledge about judgment and decision-making in general applies to the case of legal judges. Chapters in the second section focus on the specific tasks that judges perform within a unique social setting and examine the expertise and particular modes of reasoning that judges develop to deal with their tasks in this unique setting. Chapters in the third section raise questions about whether and how we can evaluate judicial performance, with implications for the possibility of improving judging through the selection and training of judges and structuring of judicial institutions. Together the essays apply a wide range of psychological insights to help us better understand how judges make decisions and to open new avenues of inquiry into the influences on judicial behavior.Less
This volume of essays examines the psychological processes that underlie judicial decision making. Chapters in the first section of the book take as their starting point the fact that judges make many of the same judgments and decisions that ordinary people make and consider how our knowledge about judgment and decision-making in general applies to the case of legal judges. Chapters in the second section focus on the specific tasks that judges perform within a unique social setting and examine the expertise and particular modes of reasoning that judges develop to deal with their tasks in this unique setting. Chapters in the third section raise questions about whether and how we can evaluate judicial performance, with implications for the possibility of improving judging through the selection and training of judges and structuring of judicial institutions. Together the essays apply a wide range of psychological insights to help us better understand how judges make decisions and to open new avenues of inquiry into the influences on judicial behavior.
Penelope Maddy
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- January 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199273669
- eISBN:
- 9780191706264
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199273669.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Logic/Philosophy of Mathematics
Opponents of a ‘scientistic’ approach as austere as Second Philosophy often imagine that philosophy just becomes science, that there's nothing left for the philosopher to do. The book as a whole aims ...
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Opponents of a ‘scientistic’ approach as austere as Second Philosophy often imagine that philosophy just becomes science, that there's nothing left for the philosopher to do. The book as a whole aims to demonstrate that this isn't true, that questions traditionally regarded a philosophical can be effectively addressed from a second-philosophical perspective. This chapter points out the heuristic value of training in the historical and contemporary practice of philosophy, and introduces the topic of word-world connections to trace second-philosophical and un-second-philosophical themes in the current debate between correspondence and disquotational theories of truth.Less
Opponents of a ‘scientistic’ approach as austere as Second Philosophy often imagine that philosophy just becomes science, that there's nothing left for the philosopher to do. The book as a whole aims to demonstrate that this isn't true, that questions traditionally regarded a philosophical can be effectively addressed from a second-philosophical perspective. This chapter points out the heuristic value of training in the historical and contemporary practice of philosophy, and introduces the topic of word-world connections to trace second-philosophical and un-second-philosophical themes in the current debate between correspondence and disquotational theories of truth.
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 ...
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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 ...
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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.
Harold D. Clarke, David Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart, and Paul Whiteley
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- November 2004
- ISBN:
- 9780199244881
- eISBN:
- 9780191601521
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/019924488X.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, UK Politics
Discusses the theoretical frameworks that guide the empirical analyses in Political Choice in Britain. The sociological framework identifies various aspects of an individual’s social location, such ...
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Discusses the theoretical frameworks that guide the empirical analyses in Political Choice in Britain. The sociological framework identifies various aspects of an individual’s social location, such as social class, region, gender and ethnicity, as sources of differential voting patterns. The individual rationality framework encompasses both the Downsian and the valence approaches. Our characterization of the Downsian approach focuses on issue positions and issue proximities. The valence approach specifies that heuristics and other types of ‘rough and ready’ calculations inform voters’ party preferences. Although conceptualized quite differently, party identification is a predictor variable in both theoretical frameworks.Less
Discusses the theoretical frameworks that guide the empirical analyses in Political Choice in Britain. The sociological framework identifies various aspects of an individual’s social location, such as social class, region, gender and ethnicity, as sources of differential voting patterns. The individual rationality framework encompasses both the Downsian and the valence approaches. Our characterization of the Downsian approach focuses on issue positions and issue proximities. The valence approach specifies that heuristics and other types of ‘rough and ready’ calculations inform voters’ party preferences. Although conceptualized quite differently, party identification is a predictor variable in both theoretical frameworks.
Chun Wei Choo
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195176780
- eISBN:
- 9780199789634
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176780.003.0005
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Knowledge Management
Depending on the degree of goal uncertainty and procedural uncertainty, organizational decision making may follow the bounded rationality model, process model, political model, or anarchic model. ...
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Depending on the degree of goal uncertainty and procedural uncertainty, organizational decision making may follow the bounded rationality model, process model, political model, or anarchic model. Individual decision making relies on heuristics that can lead to biases. Group decision making is vulnerable to the tendencies for groupthink, group polarization, and an escalation of commitment. In an attempt to reduce decision uncertainty and complexity, organizations control the creation and use of information by establishing decision premises, rules, and routines for different types of decision situations.Less
Depending on the degree of goal uncertainty and procedural uncertainty, organizational decision making may follow the bounded rationality model, process model, political model, or anarchic model. Individual decision making relies on heuristics that can lead to biases. Group decision making is vulnerable to the tendencies for groupthink, group polarization, and an escalation of commitment. In an attempt to reduce decision uncertainty and complexity, organizations control the creation and use of information by establishing decision premises, rules, and routines for different types of decision situations.
Richard Swedberg
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691155227
- eISBN:
- 9781400850358
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691155227.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Research and Statistics
This chapter focuses on the importance of heuristics in theorizing. The most common interpretation of the word heuristics is that it means “discovery.” When one theorizes, it has been argued, one ...
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This chapter focuses on the importance of heuristics in theorizing. The most common interpretation of the word heuristics is that it means “discovery.” When one theorizes, it has been argued, one should not only use the individual steps to move forward but also to try to discover something new about the phenomenon one studies. The heuristic stance, or the attitude that theorizing is about discovery, is to some extent inherent in the decision to theorize in the first place. While some of the literature on heuristics is about making important discoveries along the lines of Archimedes, there also exists another and more recent branch that has a much more modest aim. This type of heuristics essentially tries to teach the average student to develop an independent approach to solving problems.Less
This chapter focuses on the importance of heuristics in theorizing. The most common interpretation of the word heuristics is that it means “discovery.” When one theorizes, it has been argued, one should not only use the individual steps to move forward but also to try to discover something new about the phenomenon one studies. The heuristic stance, or the attitude that theorizing is about discovery, is to some extent inherent in the decision to theorize in the first place. While some of the literature on heuristics is about making important discoveries along the lines of Archimedes, there also exists another and more recent branch that has a much more modest aim. This type of heuristics essentially tries to teach the average student to develop an independent approach to solving problems.
Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and ABC Research Group (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780195388435
- eISBN:
- 9780199950089
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195388435.001.0001
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
This book invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others. The social world is a terrain where ...
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This book invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others. The social world is a terrain where humans and other animals compete with conspecifics for myriad resources, including food, mates, and status, and where rivals grant the decision maker little time for deep thought, protracted information search, or complex calculations. The social world also encompasses domains, however, where social animals such as humans learn from one another how to deal with the vagaries of a natural world that both inflicts unforeseeable hazards and presents useful opportunities and dare to trust and forge alliances with one another to boost their chances of success. According to the book's thesis, the undeniable complexity of the social world does not dictate cognitive complexity as many scholars of rationality argue. Rather, it entails circumstances that render optimization impossible or computationally arduous: intractability, the existence of incommensurable considerations, and competing goals. With optimization beyond reach, less can be more. That is, heuristics—simple strategies for making decisions when time is pressing and careful deliberation an unaffordable luxury—become indispensible mental tools. As accurate or even more accurate than complex methods when used in the appropriate environments, these heuristics are good descriptive models of how people make many decisions and inferences, but their impressive performance also poses a normative challenge for optimization models. In short, the homo socialis may prove to be a homo heuristicus whose intelligence reflects ecological rather than logical rationality.Less
This book invites readers to discover the simple heuristics that people use to navigate the complexities and surprises of environments populated with others. The social world is a terrain where humans and other animals compete with conspecifics for myriad resources, including food, mates, and status, and where rivals grant the decision maker little time for deep thought, protracted information search, or complex calculations. The social world also encompasses domains, however, where social animals such as humans learn from one another how to deal with the vagaries of a natural world that both inflicts unforeseeable hazards and presents useful opportunities and dare to trust and forge alliances with one another to boost their chances of success. According to the book's thesis, the undeniable complexity of the social world does not dictate cognitive complexity as many scholars of rationality argue. Rather, it entails circumstances that render optimization impossible or computationally arduous: intractability, the existence of incommensurable considerations, and competing goals. With optimization beyond reach, less can be more. That is, heuristics—simple strategies for making decisions when time is pressing and careful deliberation an unaffordable luxury—become indispensible mental tools. As accurate or even more accurate than complex methods when used in the appropriate environments, these heuristics are good descriptive models of how people make many decisions and inferences, but their impressive performance also poses a normative challenge for optimization models. In short, the homo socialis may prove to be a homo heuristicus whose intelligence reflects ecological rather than logical rationality.
Margaret Jane Radin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691155333
- eISBN:
- 9781400844838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691155333.003.0002
- Subject:
- Law, Company and Commercial Law
This chapter examines the normative degradation caused by the apparent lack of consent to boilerplate. It first considers the varieties of nonconsent to which consent is contrasted, including ...
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This chapter examines the normative degradation caused by the apparent lack of consent to boilerplate. It first considers the varieties of nonconsent to which consent is contrasted, including coercion and its related conceptions of force and duress; fraud, with its allied notions of misrepresentation and deception; and sheer ignorance. It then discusses problematic consent, focusing on situations involving “information asymmetry” and heuristic biases. It also explores strategies of assimilating World B to consent, with particular emphasis on the devolution of voluntary agreement. The chapter shows that consent is problematic even when recipients click a box that says “I agree,” because it remains unclear what they could actually be agreeing to.Less
This chapter examines the normative degradation caused by the apparent lack of consent to boilerplate. It first considers the varieties of nonconsent to which consent is contrasted, including coercion and its related conceptions of force and duress; fraud, with its allied notions of misrepresentation and deception; and sheer ignorance. It then discusses problematic consent, focusing on situations involving “information asymmetry” and heuristic biases. It also explores strategies of assimilating World B to consent, with particular emphasis on the devolution of voluntary agreement. The chapter shows that consent is problematic even when recipients click a box that says “I agree,” because it remains unclear what they could actually be agreeing to.
Margaret Jane Radin
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691155333
- eISBN:
- 9781400844838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691155333.003.0006
- Subject:
- Law, Company and Commercial Law
This chapter examines whether boilerplate rights deletion schemes can be justified by the “contract-as-product” theory. The contract-as-product theory attempts to sidestep the issue of consent by ...
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This chapter examines whether boilerplate rights deletion schemes can be justified by the “contract-as-product” theory. The contract-as-product theory attempts to sidestep the issue of consent by denying that a particular set of contracted terms is an individual transaction requiring consent in the traditional sense. According to this view, whatever adhesion terms accompany the purchase of a product should actually be conceived of as part of the product. The chapter considers how choice or consent by the recipient enters into the contract-as-product view, and how information asymmetry and heuristic biases render erroneous the assumption of economic rationality. It argues that contract-as-product theory cannot suffice to validate boilerplate in general, or even presumptively.Less
This chapter examines whether boilerplate rights deletion schemes can be justified by the “contract-as-product” theory. The contract-as-product theory attempts to sidestep the issue of consent by denying that a particular set of contracted terms is an individual transaction requiring consent in the traditional sense. According to this view, whatever adhesion terms accompany the purchase of a product should actually be conceived of as part of the product. The chapter considers how choice or consent by the recipient enters into the contract-as-product view, and how information asymmetry and heuristic biases render erroneous the assumption of economic rationality. It argues that contract-as-product theory cannot suffice to validate boilerplate in general, or even presumptively.
Mark Casson
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199213979
- eISBN:
- 9780191707469
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199213979.003.0003
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History, Organization Studies
The counterfactual railway system was constructed using nine heuristic principles. The most important was the Steiner Principle, which asserts that under certain conditions an optimal railway network ...
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The counterfactual railway system was constructed using nine heuristic principles. The most important was the Steiner Principle, which asserts that under certain conditions an optimal railway network is linked up by a set of spatially symmetric three-way hubs. The counterfactual network equals or exceeds the performance of the actual network according to various metrics. The counterfactual network achieves this performance with 13,000 route miles as compared to the 20,000 route miles of the actual system.Less
The counterfactual railway system was constructed using nine heuristic principles. The most important was the Steiner Principle, which asserts that under certain conditions an optimal railway network is linked up by a set of spatially symmetric three-way hubs. The counterfactual network equals or exceeds the performance of the actual network according to various metrics. The counterfactual network achieves this performance with 13,000 route miles as compared to the 20,000 route miles of the actual system.
Kim Sterelny
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- May 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195310139
- eISBN:
- 9780199871209
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195310139.003.0014
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind
This chapter argues that much human decision-making has a high cognitive load, that is, agents make satisfying decisions only by accessing and effectively using information that is hard to get, ...
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This chapter argues that much human decision-making has a high cognitive load, that is, agents make satisfying decisions only by accessing and effectively using information that is hard to get, interpret, or both. When the type of information needed for good decision-making is predictable over evolutionarily significant time frames, there is likely to be a modular explanation of its intelligent use. When the environment is stable in the right way, natural selection can pre-equip agents to register the relevant information and use it efficiently. But human environments are variable, and as a consequence there are many high-cognitive-load problems that we face whose informational requirements are not stable over evolutionary time. This chapter argues that our capacity to respond successfully to these novel problems depends on two other evolved strategies. The first is informational niche construction. Informational engineering is an ancient feature of human lifeways, and it is argued that human minds are adapted to this social transmission of information. The second strategy is less sensitive to the pace of change. Most obviously, we store information in the environment. This too is an ancient feature of human lifeways. Human minds are adapted not just to relatively invariant features of human environments, but also to changeable ones. Adaptive action in the face of novel challenges depends on some combination of informational niche construction and epistemic technology.Less
This chapter argues that much human decision-making has a high cognitive load, that is, agents make satisfying decisions only by accessing and effectively using information that is hard to get, interpret, or both. When the type of information needed for good decision-making is predictable over evolutionarily significant time frames, there is likely to be a modular explanation of its intelligent use. When the environment is stable in the right way, natural selection can pre-equip agents to register the relevant information and use it efficiently. But human environments are variable, and as a consequence there are many high-cognitive-load problems that we face whose informational requirements are not stable over evolutionary time. This chapter argues that our capacity to respond successfully to these novel problems depends on two other evolved strategies. The first is informational niche construction. Informational engineering is an ancient feature of human lifeways, and it is argued that human minds are adapted to this social transmission of information. The second strategy is less sensitive to the pace of change. Most obviously, we store information in the environment. This too is an ancient feature of human lifeways. Human minds are adapted not just to relatively invariant features of human environments, but also to changeable ones. Adaptive action in the face of novel challenges depends on some combination of informational niche construction and epistemic technology.
Sara Binzer Hobolt
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780199549948
- eISBN:
- 9780191720451
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199549948.003.0006
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, European Union
What do voters need to know? That is the question examined in this chapter which explores voting behaviour in EU referendums from a normative perspective by considering the issue of voter competence. ...
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What do voters need to know? That is the question examined in this chapter which explores voting behaviour in EU referendums from a normative perspective by considering the issue of voter competence. The main argument put forward in the chapter is that that competent voting in EU referendums is based on issue‐specific preferences and requires political knowledge, but not necessarily high levels of factual political information, since information short‐cuts such as party cues can act as substitutes for detailed information. These theoretical questions are evaluated empirically in an analysis of the 1994 Norwegian referendum on EU membership. This case study reveals that most citizens can vote ‘competently’ by relying on the recommendations of political parties, although it does not follow that voters necessarily adhere to this advice.Less
What do voters need to know? That is the question examined in this chapter which explores voting behaviour in EU referendums from a normative perspective by considering the issue of voter competence. The main argument put forward in the chapter is that that competent voting in EU referendums is based on issue‐specific preferences and requires political knowledge, but not necessarily high levels of factual political information, since information short‐cuts such as party cues can act as substitutes for detailed information. These theoretical questions are evaluated empirically in an analysis of the 1994 Norwegian referendum on EU membership. This case study reveals that most citizens can vote ‘competently’ by relying on the recommendations of political parties, although it does not follow that voters necessarily adhere to this advice.
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 ...
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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.
William Hoppitt and Kevin N. Laland
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691150703
- eISBN:
- 9781400846504
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691150703.003.0008
- Subject:
- Biology, Animal Biology
This chapter focuses on social learning strategies—functional rules specifying what, when, and who to copy. There are many plausible social learning strategies. Individuals might disproportionately ...
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This chapter focuses on social learning strategies—functional rules specifying what, when, and who to copy. There are many plausible social learning strategies. Individuals might disproportionately copy when asocial learning would be difficult or costly, when they are uncertain of what to do, when the environment changes, when established behavior proves unproductive, and so forth. Likewise, animals might preferentially copy the dominant individual, the most successful individual, or a close relative. This chapter presents evidence for some of the better-studied learning heuristics and describes statistical procedures for identifying which social learning strategies are being deployed in a data set. It examines “who” strategies, which cover frequency-dependent biases, success biases, and kin and age biases, as well as “what” strategies, random copying, and statistical methods for detecting social learning strategies. Finally, it evaluates meta-strategies, best strategies, and hierarchical control.Less
This chapter focuses on social learning strategies—functional rules specifying what, when, and who to copy. There are many plausible social learning strategies. Individuals might disproportionately copy when asocial learning would be difficult or costly, when they are uncertain of what to do, when the environment changes, when established behavior proves unproductive, and so forth. Likewise, animals might preferentially copy the dominant individual, the most successful individual, or a close relative. This chapter presents evidence for some of the better-studied learning heuristics and describes statistical procedures for identifying which social learning strategies are being deployed in a data set. It examines “who” strategies, which cover frequency-dependent biases, success biases, and kin and age biases, as well as “what” strategies, random copying, and statistical methods for detecting social learning strategies. Finally, it evaluates meta-strategies, best strategies, and hierarchical control.
Andrew Kehler
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- May 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195331639
- eISBN:
- 9780199867981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195331639.003.0005
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics
This chapter argues that the manner in which pronoun interpretation has been characterized by many psycholinguistic and computational linguistic studies over the last three decades — what is called ...
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This chapter argues that the manner in which pronoun interpretation has been characterized by many psycholinguistic and computational linguistic studies over the last three decades — what is called here the SMASH procedure, for Search, Match, and Select using Heuristics – is untenable and therefore should be abandoned. Data are presented that are unlikely to be explained by theories based on interactions among superficial heuristics and preferences, and instead motivate an account in which the relevant interactions lie at the levels of information structure and discourse coherence establishment. The study sketches an analysis of this process, with reference to a set of key examples, although a more complete analysis will be left for future work.Less
This chapter argues that the manner in which pronoun interpretation has been characterized by many psycholinguistic and computational linguistic studies over the last three decades — what is called here the SMASH procedure, for Search, Match, and Select using Heuristics – is untenable and therefore should be abandoned. Data are presented that are unlikely to be explained by theories based on interactions among superficial heuristics and preferences, and instead motivate an account in which the relevant interactions lie at the levels of information structure and discourse coherence establishment. The study sketches an analysis of this process, with reference to a set of key examples, although a more complete analysis will be left for future work.
Hersh Shefrin
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195161212
- eISBN:
- 9780199832996
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195161211.003.0002
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Financial Economics
Statistics and probability are essential concepts when it comes to risk. Yet, most people have poor intuition about statistics and probabilities. Instead of behaving like professional statisticians, ...
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Statistics and probability are essential concepts when it comes to risk. Yet, most people have poor intuition about statistics and probabilities. Instead of behaving like professional statisticians, they rely on flawed intuition, based on rules of thumb called heuristics. By using heuristics people render themselves vulnerable to errors and biases. That is why the first theme of behavioral finance is called heuristic‐driven bias. The chapter describes these biases using behavioral concepts such as availability, representativeness, anchoring‐and‐adjustment, overconfidence, and aversion to ambiguity. Examples are provided to illustrate how these concepts affect the manner in which investors form predictions.Less
Statistics and probability are essential concepts when it comes to risk. Yet, most people have poor intuition about statistics and probabilities. Instead of behaving like professional statisticians, they rely on flawed intuition, based on rules of thumb called heuristics. By using heuristics people render themselves vulnerable to errors and biases. That is why the first theme of behavioral finance is called heuristic‐driven bias. The chapter describes these biases using behavioral concepts such as availability, representativeness, anchoring‐and‐adjustment, overconfidence, and aversion to ambiguity. Examples are provided to illustrate how these concepts affect the manner in which investors form predictions.
F. H. Buckley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- May 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195341263
- eISBN:
- 9780199866892
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195341263.003.0003
- Subject:
- Law, Philosophy of Law
Cognitive paternalism would impeach choices which are misshaped by our judgment heuristics, instincts, or emotions. An important empirical literature at the border of psychology and economics suggest ...
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Cognitive paternalism would impeach choices which are misshaped by our judgment heuristics, instincts, or emotions. An important empirical literature at the border of psychology and economics suggest that we are often led astray by biases of one sort or another, and that in such cases we might attend to the paternalist to set us straight. This kind of paternalism was enormously popular in the last twenty years, but now seems to have been oversold. Our judgment heuristics are much more sophisticated and accurate than might at first appear, in the empiricist's laboratory. Apart from this, the cognitive paternalist who imposes fetters on choices will be affected by his own set of biases, notably the hindsight bias in which things just had to turn out the way they did. Because of this he is too likely to assume that decisions were poorly made.Less
Cognitive paternalism would impeach choices which are misshaped by our judgment heuristics, instincts, or emotions. An important empirical literature at the border of psychology and economics suggest that we are often led astray by biases of one sort or another, and that in such cases we might attend to the paternalist to set us straight. This kind of paternalism was enormously popular in the last twenty years, but now seems to have been oversold. Our judgment heuristics are much more sophisticated and accurate than might at first appear, in the empiricist's laboratory. Apart from this, the cognitive paternalist who imposes fetters on choices will be affected by his own set of biases, notably the hindsight bias in which things just had to turn out the way they did. Because of this he is too likely to assume that decisions were poorly made.
Lael J. Schooler, Ralph Hertwig, and Stefan M. Herzog
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195315448
- eISBN:
- 9780199932429
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195315448.003.0039
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Human-Technology Interaction
Theorists ranging from William James (1890) to some contemporary psychologists have argued that forgetting is the key to proper functioning of memory. The authors elaborate on the notion of ...
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Theorists ranging from William James (1890) to some contemporary psychologists have argued that forgetting is the key to proper functioning of memory. The authors elaborate on the notion of beneficial forgetting by proposing that loss of information aids inference heuristics that exploit mnemonic information. They demonstrate this by implementing the recognition and fluency heuristics for two-alternative choice within the ACT-R cognitive architecture. For the recognition heuristic, forgetting can boost accuracy by increasing the chances that only a single alternative is recognized. Simulations of the fluency heuristic, choosing based on the speed with which the alternatives are recognized, indicate that forgetting aids the discrimination between recognition speeds. The authors show that retrieval fluency can be a proxy for real-world quantities, that people can discriminate between two objects’ retrieval fluencies, and that people’s inferences are in line with the fluency heuristic.Less
Theorists ranging from William James (1890) to some contemporary psychologists have argued that forgetting is the key to proper functioning of memory. The authors elaborate on the notion of beneficial forgetting by proposing that loss of information aids inference heuristics that exploit mnemonic information. They demonstrate this by implementing the recognition and fluency heuristics for two-alternative choice within the ACT-R cognitive architecture. For the recognition heuristic, forgetting can boost accuracy by increasing the chances that only a single alternative is recognized. Simulations of the fluency heuristic, choosing based on the speed with which the alternatives are recognized, indicate that forgetting aids the discrimination between recognition speeds. The authors show that retrieval fluency can be a proxy for real-world quantities, that people can discriminate between two objects’ retrieval fluencies, and that people’s inferences are in line with the fluency heuristic.
Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and Rüdiger Sparr
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780195315448
- eISBN:
- 9780199932429
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195315448.003.0116
- Subject:
- Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Human-Technology Interaction
This chapter analyzes how valuable the assumption of systematic environment imbalance is for performing rough-and-ready intuitive estimates, which people regularly do when inferring the quantitative ...
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This chapter analyzes how valuable the assumption of systematic environment imbalance is for performing rough-and-ready intuitive estimates, which people regularly do when inferring the quantitative value of an object (e.g., its frequency, size, value, or quality). The chapter outlines how systematic environment imbalance can be quantified using the framework of power laws. It investigates to what extent power-law characteristics and other statistical properties of real-world environments can be allies of two simple estimation heuristics, QuickEst and the mapping heuristic. The analyses, which involve comparing the estimation performances of the heuristics relative to more complex strategies, demonstrate that QuickEst could be particularly suited for deriving rough-and-ready estimates in skewed distributions with highly dispersed cue validities, whereas the mapping heuristic might be most suited when the cues have similar validities.Less
This chapter analyzes how valuable the assumption of systematic environment imbalance is for performing rough-and-ready intuitive estimates, which people regularly do when inferring the quantitative value of an object (e.g., its frequency, size, value, or quality). The chapter outlines how systematic environment imbalance can be quantified using the framework of power laws. It investigates to what extent power-law characteristics and other statistical properties of real-world environments can be allies of two simple estimation heuristics, QuickEst and the mapping heuristic. The analyses, which involve comparing the estimation performances of the heuristics relative to more complex strategies, demonstrate that QuickEst could be particularly suited for deriving rough-and-ready estimates in skewed distributions with highly dispersed cue validities, whereas the mapping heuristic might be most suited when the cues have similar validities.
