It is only just recently that people have the tools to judge how well they are doing when making decisions. These tools were conceptualized in the seventeenth century. Since then many people have worked to sharpen the concepts, and to explore how these can be applied further. The problems of decision-making and the theory developed correspondingly have drawn the interest of mathematicians, psychologists, statisticians, economists, philosophers, organizational experts, sociologists, not only for their general relevance, but also for a more intrinsic fascination. There are quite a few institutionalized activities to disseminate results and stimulate research in decision-making. For about a decade now a European organizational structure, centered mainly around the psy chological interest in decision-making. There have been conferences in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Uxbridge, Rome and Darmstadt. Conference papers have been partly published+. The organization has thus stabilized, and its re latively long history makes it interesting to see what kind of developments occurred, within the area of interest.

Public Policymaking Reexamined is now recognized as a fundamental treatise for public policy studies. Although it caused much controversy when it was first published for its systematic approach to policy studies, the book is acknowledged as a modern classic of continuing importance for the teaching and research of public policy, planning and policy analysis, and public administration. The paperback includes a new introduction updating and supplementing many of the author's original ideas. Professor Dror combines the approaches of policy analysis, behavioral science, and systems analysis in his examination of the reality of public policymaking and his suggestions for its reform. Actual policymaking is carefully evaluated with the help of explicit criteria and standards based on an optimal model approach, resulting in detailed proposals for improvement. He applies a scientific orientation to the study of social facts and theory.

What should I do?, How should I deal with this?, How should I behave?, How should I act? we ask ourselves daily. But, this is only the first part of the sentence, while the full sentence is What should I do ... to achieve such and such?, for example to complete an assigned task, to do well before my boss or a client, to be pleased with myself, to carry out my plans, to make money in the stock market, to pass an exam, to complete an application, etc. These and similar questions that people ask, consciously or not, openly or not, are decisions.What skills must we master, especially when there is a need to make not only elementary decisions, but also decisions that affect the existence, health, and even lives of people? First, Laszlo Zsolnai writes that we should acquire the skill of gaining knowledge. Only then will we stand a chance of reacting to things that are improbable today, but could become a fact tomorrow. Also essential is the skill of designing, i.e., preparing actions conceptually in order to make decisions before irreversible changes occur. Finally, it is essential to master the skill of multidimensional judgment within the space defined by effectiveness, efficiency, and ethics.This is Zsolnai's attempt to build a model of making ethical decisions both effectively and efficiently. Therefore, the model is much broader than purely an analytical framework would be. It must tell us how to act rather than limit us to reflection on actions already performed; it must combine decision and praxiological analysis of human conduct. The proposed model enlarges the scope of the debate and suggests new avenues of both rational and responsible decision making. This is an original statement of the crossover of policy and morality.

This book offers an overview of recent research on the psychology of judgment and decision making, the field that investigates the processes by which people draw conclusions, reach evaluations, and make choices. An introductory, historically oriented chapter provides a way of viewing the overall structure of the field, its recent trends, and its possible directions. Subsequent sections present significant recent papers by prominent researchers, organized to reveal the currents, connections, and controversies that animate the field. Current trends in the field are illustrated with papers from ongoing streams of research. The papers on "connections" explore memory, explanation and argument, affect, attitudes, and motivation. Finally, a section on "controversies" presents problem representation, domain knowledge, content specificity, rule-governed versus rule-described behavior, and proposals for radical departures and new beginnings in the field. Students and researchers in psychology who have an interest in cognitive processes will find this text to be rewarding reading.

This second edition examines how one makes a decision and the factors that influence that decision.

This book contains an edited selection of papers presented at the Eighth Research Conference on Subjective Probability, Utility and Decision Making, held in Budapest. Together they span a wide range of new developments in studies of decision making, the practice of decision analysis and the development of decision-aiding technology.The volume is arranged in sections: Societal Decision Making; Organizational Decision Making; Aiding the Structuring of Small Scale Decision Problems, and Tracing Decision Processes.The emphasis is on decision processes and structures and their applications, rather than formal modelling in isolation, thus reflecting current developments in research and practice which follow from the understanding of the nature and operation of decision theoretical models gained during the 1970's.The fifth section, A Symposium on the Validity of Studies on Heuristics and Biases, is of a different nature. The papers take stock of the considerable volume of work investigation ``heuristics and biases'' in decision making over the past decade, and their implication for theory and practice.

This book describes an original, empirical study of judicial decision making. The process of determining sentences is a difficult one for judges and often unnecessarily intuitive, subjective, and complex. The present study introduces a conceptual outline and empirical technique for increasing the precision of sentencing policy, thus offering an aid to judges who sentence in the light of this policy. The primary purpose of this model of judicial decision making is to provide a framework for scaling the seriousness of any single case in relation to the facts of that case and for relating this assessment to the appropriate quantum of sentence. The validity of the model is tested and cross-validated in an archival study. This innovative research serves as an important prototype for a system of numerical guidance to judges and sentencers.

This volume brings together a range of contributors from Europe and North America. All contributions were especially commissioned with a view to e- cidating a major multidisciplinary topic that is of concern to both academics and practitioners. The focus of the book is on expert judgment and its interaction with decision support systems. In the first part, the nature of expertise is discussed and characteristics of expert judges are described. Issues concemed with the eval- tion of judgment in the psychological laboratory are assessed and contrasted with studies of expert judgment in ecologically valid contexts. In addition, issues concerned with eliciting and validating expert knowledge are discussed. Dem- strations of good judgmental performance are linked to situational factors such as feedback cycles, and measurement of coherence and reliability in expert ju- ment is introduced as a baseline determinant of good judgmental performance. Issues concerned with the representation of elicited expert knowledge in kno- edge-based systems are evaluated and methods are described that have been shown to produce improvements in judgmental performance. Behavioral and mathematical ways of combining judgments from multiple experts are compared and contrasted. Finally, the issues developed in the preceding contributions are focused on current controversies in decision support. Expert judgment is utilized as a major input into decision analysis, forecasting with statistical models, and expert s- tems.