Judgement & Decision Making

Decision Making: Concerned with choosing among options

concerned with potential consequences

Judgement: the process used in drawing clusions from the knowledge and evidence available

concerned with accuracy

Bayes Theorem(Normative)

probabilties of base rate and likelyhood ratio.

futher studies show we tend to forget / ignore the base rate

We don't know the probabilities

Simons Satisficing model(Descriptive)

opt for a choice that is good enough

generate alternatives until a good enough one is found. might not be best

in line with that we have limited cognitive resources & time

heuristics can lead to biases or poor decisions

Cognitive prothesis aims to reduce poor decision making of the human (traditional export systems)

Cognitive tools aim to support adaptive decision making rather than replace decision maker e.g. spreadsheets for 'what-if'

Ignoring base rates, only surface evidence used,

Representative heuristics

events that are representatyive or typical of a class are assigned a high probabilityof occurance

e.g. if someone has learned to use a button by double clicking,they will continue to do this?

Availability heuristic

estimating requencey of events based on how easy it is to recall the relevent info from LTMe.g. letter r, more start of words, or third letter words.

Support theory

an event will appear more likely if it is supported by a description

why? it may draw attention to what could happenor memory limitations may mean people do not rememer al of the relevantinfo if it is not supplied

Recognition heuristic

Confirmation bias

memory is distorted by expectations

Primacy effects

tend to remember items/actions at the beginning than the end

e.g. used in the classroom

Recency effect

tend to remember items/actions at the end

Sensitive to loss than gain

Naturalistic (Klein)

Ethnography

Study of how people make decisions in complex, varied in situ environments

Fireman

Situation awareness

perception of elements in the environment given time/space

The comprehension of their meaning

Projection of their status in the future