Judgment, Decision Making and Risk Perception

Recommended Prerequisites

Passive command of English.

Teaching Methods

Expository Lectures, demonstrations and case studies. individual assignements concerning specific topics.

Learning Outcomes

The curricular unit aims to provide:

An organized view of the main theoretical frameworks and research trends in the field of Judgment&Decision-Making, highlighting its fundamental relationship with perceptual, affective/emotional and inferential processes

An introduction to the applied contributions of the field: behavioral economics and behavioral finance, marketing and consumer psychology, clinical and legal decision making, negotiation, risk communication.

A critical appreciation of the comparative advantages and limits of widspread operational paradigms in the study of judgment and decision making.

Work Placement(s)

No

Syllabus

Psychological Theories of Decision Making: descriptive, normative and prescriptive approaches.

Decision heuristics: applied aspects.

Prospect Theory: applied aspects.

Evaluability and affective heuristics: applied aspects.

Intertemporal choice: shortcomings of discount models.

Disagreement between laypeople and experts: the psychometric model of risk.

Risk perception and risk communication: risk as analyis, risk as feeling, risk as politics.

Formal models of judgment: lens models and cognitive algebra.

Intuition versus analysis: the cognitive continuum theory; from novice to expert.

Deciding under ambiguity: conjectural notes.

Head Lecturer(s)

Armando Luís Diniz Mónica de Oliveira

Assessment Methods

Assessment
Synthesis work: 20.0%
Frequency: 80.0%

Bibliography

Baron, J. (2008). Thinking and Deciding. Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.

Connolly, T., Arkes, H., Hammond, K. (Eds) (2000). Judgment and Decision Making: an Interdisciplinary Reader.  Cambrigde : Cambridge University Press.

Cooksey, R. W. (1996), Judgment Analysis: Theory, Methods, and Applications. S.D., CA: Academic Press.

Gilovich, T., Griffin, D. & Kahneman, D. (Eds.), (2000). Heuristics and biases: The psychology of intuitive judgment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (Eds) (2002) Choices, Values, and Frames. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koehler, D. J. & Harvey ,N. (Eds) (2004). Blackwell Handbook of Judgment and Decision Making.  Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Slovic, P. (2010). The Feeling of Risk: New Perspectives on Risk Perception. NY: Routledge.