Utility, Probability, and Human Decision Making

Human decision making involves problems which are being studied with increasing interest and sophistication. They range from controversial political decisions via individual consumer decisions to such simple tasks as signal discriminations. Although it would seem that decisions have to do with choices among available actions of any kind, there is general agreement that decision making research should pertain to choice prob lems which cannot be solved without a predecisional stage of finding choice alternatives, weighing evidence, and judging values. The ultimate objective of scientific research on decision making is two-fold: (a) to develop a theoretically sound technology for the optimal solution of decision problems, and (b) to formulate a descriptive theory of human decision making. The latter may, in tum, protect decision makers from being caught in the traps of their own limitations and biases. Recently, in decision making research the strong emphasis on well defined laboratory tasks is decreasing in favour of more realistic studies in various practical settings. This may well have been caused by a growing awareness of the fact that decision-behaviour is strongly determined by situational factors, which makes it necessary to look into processes of interaction between the decision maker and the relevant task environ ment. Almost inevitably there is a parallel shift of interest towards problems of utility measurement and the evaluation of consequences.

Section I. Multi-Attribute Utility. - Editors Introduction. - Experimental Applications of Multi-Attribute Utility Models. - Multi-Attribute Utility Theory: Models and Assessment Procedures. - How We Can Use the Notion of Semi-Orders to Build Outranking Relations in Multi-Criteria Decision Making. - Multi-Criteria Decision Making: Comments on Jacquet-Lagrèze s Paper. - An Investigation of Subjective Preference Orderings for Multi-Attributed Alternatives. - Section II. Subjective Probability. - Editors Introduction. - Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. - A Structural Theory of Uncertain Knowledge. - Subjective Probability Forecasting: Some Real World Experiments. - A Three-Step Procedure for Assigning Probabilities to Rare Events. - Section III. Probability in Courtroom Decision Making. - Editors Introduction. - Probabilities and the Law. - Probabilistic Analysis of Identification Evidence. - Juror Decisions and the Determination of Guilt in Capital Punishment Cases: A Bayesian Perspective. - Section IV. Some Alternative Views on Decision Behavior. - Editors Introduction. - Utility, Welfare, and Probability: An Unorthodox Economist s View. - Search Behavior in Non-Simultaneous Choice Situations: Satisficing or Maximizing? . - Decision Time as a Function of Task Complexity. - Decision Time and Task Complexity: Comments on Hogarth s Paper. - Section V. Dynamic Decision Making. - Editors Introduction. - Research Paradigms for Studying Dynamic Decision Behavior. - Dynamic Decision Behavior: Comments on Rapoport s Paper. - Section VI. Problems of Collective Decision Making. - Editors Introduction. - Some Observations on Theories of Collective Decisions. - The Use of Decision Analysis in the Public Sector. - Index of Names. - Index of Subjects.