Human Judgment and Social Policy


Book Description

With numerous examples from law, medicine, engineering, and economics, the author presents a comprehensive examination of the underlying dynamics of judgment, dramatizing its important role in the formation of social policies which affect us all.







Human Judgement and Social Policy


Book Description

This work focuses on how social policy grows out of the policymaker's judgment about what to do, what can be done, and what ought to be? Answers necessarily emerge from human judgment, and from human error and the unavoidable uncertainty in the world.




Human Judgment and Social Policy


Book Description

From the O.J. Simpson verdict to peace-making in the Balkans, the critical role of human judgement--complete with its failures, flaws, and successes--has never been more hotly debated and analyzed than it is today. This landmark work examines the dynamics of judgement and its impact on events that take place in human society, which require the direction and control of social policy. Research on social policy typically focuses on content. This book concentrates instead on the decision-making process itself. Drawing on 50 years of empirical research in decision theory, Hammond examines the possibilities for wisdom and cognitive competence in the formation of social policies, and applies these lessons to specific examples, such as the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the health care debate. Uncertainly, he tells us, can seldom be fully eliminated; thus error is inevitable, and injustice for some unavoidable. But the capacity for make wise judgments increases to the extent that we understand the potential pitfalls and their origin. The judgment process for example involves an ongoing rivalry between intuition and analysis, accuracy and rationality. The source of this tension requires an examination of the evolutionary roots of human judgement and how these fundamental features may be changing as our civilization increasingly becomes an information and knowledge-based society. With numerous examples from law, medicine, engineering, and economics, the author dramatizes the importance of judgment and its role in the formation of social policies which affect us all, and issues the first comprehensive examination of its underlying dynamics.




Human Judgement and Decision Processes


Book Description

Human Judgment and Decision Processes is a collection of papers that covers the various theoretical frameworks that relate judgment to decision making. The book is comprised of 10 chapters that cover both mathematical models involved in decision making and interpersonal aspect of judgment process. The first five chapters cover papers about decision making. The subjects of the papers include multiattribute utility measurement for social decision making; portfolio theory and the measurement of risk; and information-integration analysis of risky decision making. The other half of the text deals with the judgment process, which includes topics such as interaction of judge and informational components; judgment and decision processes in the formation and change of social attitudes; and the role of probabilistic and syllogistic reasoning in cognitive organization and social inference. The book will be of great use to psychologists involved in research on human judgment and decision process.




Human Judgment and Decision Processes in Applied Settings


Book Description

Human Judgment and Decision Processes in Applied Settings is the second to two volumes that attempt to define the areas of progress in the understanding of human decision making processes. The first volume, Human Judgment and Decision Processes (Academic Press, 1975) was concerned with formal and mathematical approaches to the problems of judgment and decision making. The major theoretical orientations (information integration theory, signal detection theory, portfolio theory, and multiattribute-utility measurement) were presented and their rationales discussed. The present volume is concerned with the application of these theories, and the various techniques derived from them, to the problems of decision making in the everyday world. The chapters reflect the many modifications and adjustments that must be made to mathematical rules in order to apply decision theory models in the real world. The tools described serve a broad variety of interests: those of the urban health or social planner, the organizational manager, the researcher, the educator, and, in fact, all of those who must weight evidence to reach decisions. Planner, manager, researcher, teacher, policymaker—all will find assistance in overcoming the commonly encountered roadblocks when one must choose between alternatives in what remains an uncertain world.




Judgement And Decision


Book Description

From various vantage points the authors consider the topic of judgment and decision in policy formation. Richard Lamm, governor of Colorado, describes the problem of utilizing scientific knowledge in the context of political survival. Joseph Coates, assistant to the director, Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, explores the nature of public policy issues. Kenneth Hammond, director of the Center for the Study of Judgment and decision in Policy Formation at the University of Colorado, describes the competence of thought that can he brought to bear on public policy issues. Paul Slovic, Decision Research Inc., addresses the problem of risk assessment in policy formation from the point of view of a cognitive psychologist. Ward Edwards, director, Social Science Research Institute, University of Southern California, describes the general manner in which decision theory may be applied to policy formation. Kenneth Boulding, program director, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, provides an overview of judgment and decision in policy formation. Eillel Einhorn, professor of industrial psychology, University of Chicago, shows the consequences of fallible judgment for social policy formation. Kenneth Hammond and Leonard Adelman provide an example of the application of judgment analysis to a public policy issue.




Human Judgment


Book Description

There are four basic goals for research in SJT (Social Judgment Theory): - to analyze judgment tasks and judgmental processes; - to analyze the relations between judgmental systems (i.e. to analyze agreement and its structure), and between tasks and judgmental systems (i.e. to analyze achievement and its structure; - to understand how relations between judgmental systems and between judgmental systems and tasks come to be whatever they are (i.e. to understand processes of communication and learning and their effects upon achievement and agreement); - to find means of improving the relation between judgmental systems (improving agreement) and between judgmental systems and tasks (improving achievement).




Social Judgement Theory


Book Description

This special issue of "Thinking and Reasoning" is devoted to social judgement theory SJT, which has its origins in Egon Brunswik's probabilistic functionalism.; The first paper discusses the history and theory of SJT and explores Hammond's distinction between coherence and correspondence criteria. The next paper presents the major methodological approaches of SJT, with a focus on the Lens Model. Four applications follow, including an exploration of the medical applications of SJT.




Judgments, Decisions, and Public Policy


Book Description

Behavioral decision theory draws on experimental research in cognitive psychology to provide a descriptively accurate model of human behavior. It shows that people systematically violate the normative assumptions of economic rationality by miscalculating probabilities and making choices based on one-economic criteria. Behavioral decision theory s ability to capture the complexity of human judgments and choices makes it a useful foundation for improving public policy analysis, design, and implementation. This volume showcases the research of leading scholars who are working on applications of behavioral decision theory in diverse policy settings. It is designed to give policy analysts and practitioners who are non-psychologists a clearer understanding of the complexities of human judgment and choice, and an idea of how to integrate behavioral decision theoretic insights into the policy sciences. This interdisciplinary volume should be insightful and useful wherever people s judgments and choices matter for policy formulation, acceptance, and effectiveness.