Gordon F. Pitz

Judgement and decision: theory and application

INTR ODUCT ION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . ...... 139 THE ORETICAL OR IENTAT ION S . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . ........ . . . .. . .... . . 1 4 1 Historical Background ....... . ......... ..... . . . . . . . . . . ... .. . . . ..... . . . 1 4 1 Prescriptive Theories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . 141 Algebraic Models of Judgment and Decision . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .... . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . ... 1 44 Information Processing Orientations . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .... . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .. . . . 145 JU DGMENT AN D DEC ISI ON PR OCE SSE S . . . . . . .... . .. . ..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Sources of Information and Uncertainty . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. . . .. . 147 Bases for Inferences 149 Conflict, Integration, and Tradeoff 1 5 1 Behavioral Strategies i n Judgment and Choice 152 Development of Judgment and Decision Skills . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . ..... . . .. . . ... ..... . . . . . ... . 154 APPLICAT ION S OF THE OR Y AN D R ESEARCH . . . . . . .. .. . .. . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 155 Building a Structure for the Problem .. . . .... ....... . . . . . .. . . ... . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . .... . . 155 Incorporating Judgments into the Aid ...... . . ........ 156 Evaluation and Implementation of Decision Aids . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... . . .. . . . . . ... . . . . . . .. . . 1 58 C ONC LUS ION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 59

An analysis of career decision making from the point of view of information processing and decision theory

Abstract We review implications for career decision making (CDM) that might be drawn from recent studies of human information processing and decision making. Normative decision theory, the theory of how one ought to make choices, may be regarded as an idealized view of rationality towards which a person might strive. Descriptive studies, however, show how limited is the rationality of peoples behavior when they are left to their own devices. Techniques of decision analysis have been developed for helping people to make better decisions. These methods might be of value to CDM, both in supplementing traditional guidance procedures, and in defining criteria used to evaluate CDM. However, decision analysis does have shortcomings, and there are problems that may arise when applying decision analysis to CDM. These problems are discussed and evaluated.

Procedures for eliciting choices in the analysis of individual decisions

Abstract Subjects were asked to list as many choices as they could in response to typical problems of personal choice. Seven conditions were compared with respect to the number of choices generated. In three conditions, subjects were told what the decision makers objectives might be, and were asked to think of choices that might satisfy these objectives. In two conditions subjects were shown examples of possible choices, either organized in categories or listed randomly. Two control conditions were used. All subjects responded to the same pretest problem, then responded to two test problems. When the objectives were presented to subjects one at a time, the number of choices was greater than in other conditions; among the other conditions, however, there were no differences in overall number of choices. The two conditions in which examples were shown did produce more choices related to the examples. These results may be useful for helping a person to generate a complete list of alternatives when using formal methods of decision analysis.

Adolescents' perceived risk and personal experience with natural disasters: an evaluation of cognitive heuristics.

Elevated risk judgments for negative life events have been linked to personal experience with events. We tested the hypothesis that cognitive heuristics are the underlying cognitive mechanism for this relation. The availability (i.e., memory for incidents) and simulation (i.e., imagery) heuristics were evaluated as possible mediators for the relation between personal experience and risk estimates for fatal weather events. Adolescents who had experienced weather disasters estimated their personal risk for weather events. Support was obtained for the simulation heuristic (imagery) as a mediator for the relation. Availability for lightning disaster experience was also found to be a mediator for the relation between personal lightning disaster experience and risk estimate for future events. The implications for risk perception research are discussed.

Decision Making and Cognition

The last five years has seen a remarkable growth of interest in cognitive psychology, a topic that includes all those approaches to psychology that postulate internal, mental processes on the basis of observed behavior. Although cognition has always been a respectable area of psychology in Europe and Great Britain, the influence of behaviorism in the United States has been so strong that, until recently, the term “cognition” was considered by many to be inappropriate for use in the scientific study of behavior. In recent years this attitude has changed; there are now few psychologists who would deny the legitimacy of cognitive phenomena as a topic for psychological study. This growth of interest in cognition has led to the development of novel approaches to theory and research methodology that have had an effect on all areas of psychology.

Strategies of information seeking in deferred decision making

Abstract In a simple binary decision task, subjects could purchase information that was relevant to the decision to be made. Three models of behavior were described, based upon three strategies that might determine how much information was bought. The optimal strategy, one based upon a critical odds, was clearly not used by subjects. A fixed-sample-size strategy was inadequate to describe behavior, but a modification of this strategy was a better description. The form of departures of the data from the predictions of the three models implied that subjects used a stopping strategy defined by a critical odds that decreased as a positively accelerated function of sample size.

Effects of amount of information on predictions of uncertain quantities

Abstract The experiment examined the relationship between the degree of uncertainty associated with predictions of a quantity and the amount of information available about the quantity. Subjects were asked either to give point estimates for a homogeneous set of quantities or to assess 0.05 and 0.95 fractiles. As in previous studies, the fractiles tended to be too close, indicating overconfidence. The level of overconfidence decreased, however, as the amount of information increased. The reduction in overconfidence occurred because, when more information was available, the fractile interval was wider while the accuracy of the predictions improved. Subjects gave more extreme estimates when less information was available and exhibited more certainty about their predictions. The results are contrasted with previous studies of the effects of information on confidence judgments.

Assessing the utility of multiattribute utility assessments

Abstract The usefulness of multiattribute utility (MAU) analysis was assessed by comparing the sensitivity to both relevant and irrelevant information of analytically derived judgments and of holistic judgments. Subjects evaluated four hypothetical apartments, described to them in a series of letters, by indicating how much rent they would be willing to pay for each apartment. In addition, they completed a survey that requested judgments about the six attributes that characterized the apartments. From the survey, evaluations of the apartments were derived from an additive MAU model. The holistic rental judgments exhibited little sensitivity to differences among the apartments. However, they did show a “linearity effect,” an ordering of the apartments that apparently reflected an oversimplified interpretation of the information. Derived judgments showed no linearity effect, and did show a sensitivity to apartment differences. There was some evidence that derived judgments were less sensitive if the MAU judgments were made after making the holistic judgments. Holistic and derived judgments were generally uncorrelated, presumably because of the heavy information processing demands imposed by the holistic judgment task.

Measuring Patient Perceptions of the Patient-Doctor Interaction Development of the PDIS

Patient satisfaction has been related to patient compliance, doctor-patient information exchange, and continuity of care. However, the construct of patient satisfaction is not well defined; its measurement has typically consisted of the anecdotal generation of questions that may not tap issues of concern to patients. Generally, neither reliability nor validity of the measurement instruments are considered. The present study investigated the construct of patient satisfaction and developed the Smith-Falvo Patient-Doctor Interaction Scale (PDIS), a patient satisfaction scale based on empirically derived dimensions of patient satisfaction. The project consisted of three studies. The first study involved the generation of physician behavior descriptions by 22 family practice center patients. The resultant 1540 descriptions were grouped into 80 reliable categories. In Study 2, a sample of 30 patients rated the behavior descriptions on a 9-point scale from most preferred to least preferred. Multidimensional scaling techniques were applied to the preference ratings, resulting in the identification of two dimensions: general health care delivery and inappropriate interpersonal interactions. The PDIS was then constructed from items salient to these two dimensions. Outcome of the investigation ofthe reliability and validity of the PDIS in a third study was quite positive.

Human Engineering of Decision Aids

Publisher Summary The purpose of a decision aid is to provide an analysis of a problem that is acceptable to the decision maker, and that makes recommendations for future action. The final recommendation must be consistent with all other information provided by the decision maker. Presumably the decision aid contains procedures for detecting inconsistencies, whether they occur among the initial judgments or between the final recommendations and the persons global evaluation of the options. The formal system of decision analysis concerns the specification of beliefs and values. Because decision theory itself provides the rationale for evaluating any behavior, self reference occurs whenever there are attempts to evaluate the statements of value. Invariance of recommendation under changes in context may be the safest guide to action. The value of a decision analysis lies in the insight that it provides into the decision makers value system, rather than in specific recommendations for action. Several computer programs have recently appeared that can implement such a decision analysis. These programs make few assumptions about the nature of the persons problem, and include procedures for helping the person to describe any problem in terms that would be suitable for analysis. The overall goal of the system is to arrive at a choice that maximizes some explicit criterion, given certain assumptions about the nature of the problem. Achieving the objective of the decision system is clearly dependent on input of some sort from the human decision maker. There is discussion on communication between decision maker and decision aid—model selection, problem structuring, representation and translation, information retrieval, generating new ideas, and quantification.