Escaping from Bad Decisions

A Behavioral Decision-Theoretic Perspective

Kazuhisa Takemura

• Publisher: Academic Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780128160336
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Microeconomics
• Index: Economics

Escaping from Bad Decisions presents a modern conceptual and mathematical framework of the decision-making process. By interpreting ordinal utility theory as normative analysis examined in view of rationality, it shows how decision-making under certainty, risk, and uncertainty can be better understood. It provides a critical examination of psychological models in multi-attribute decision-making, and evaluates the constitutive elements of "good" and "bad" decisions. Multi-attribute decision-making is analysed descriptively, based on the psychological model of decision-making and computer simulations of decision strategies. Finally, prescriptive examinations of multi-attribute decision-making are performed, supporting the argument that decision-making from a pluralistic perspective creates results that can help "escape" from bad decisions.

This book will be of particular interest to graduate students and early career researchers in economics, decision-theory, behavioral economics, experimental economics, psychology, cognitive sciences, and decision neurosciences.

• Provides a comprehensive background to the phenomena of bad decisions, considered in their economic, psychological and cognitive aspects
• Reinterprets existing theories and phenomena and proposes a new overview of decision behaviors by integrating mathematical and psychological perspectives
• Adapts model-based techniques, such as mathematical model based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using mathematical models of the decision process

Table of contents

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• About the author
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Escaping from bad decisions
• 2. Formal definitions of the worst decisions, best decisions, and bad decisions
• 3. Rational choice, irrational choice, and bad decisions
• 4. Preference ordering and measurement
• 5. Rational preference, irrational preference, and revealed preference
• 6. Multiattribute decision-making, multiobjective optimization, and the additive conjoint system
• 7. A computer simulation of cognitive effort and the accuracy of two-stage decision strategies in a multiattribute decision-making process
• 8. A computer simulation of bad decisions and good decisions: an extended analysis of two-stage decision strategies
• 9. A process tracing study of decision strategies and bad decisions
• 10. A process tracing study of bad decisions: using eye tracking in food decision-making
• 11. Decision strategies and bad group decision-making: a group meeting experiment
• 12. An observational experiment in group decision-making: Can people detect bad group decisions?
• 13. Revisiting the group decision-making experiment
• 14. The detection of bad decisions and a voting experiment
• 15. Situation dependence of group and individual decision making and bad decisions
• 16. The contingent focus model and bad decisions
• 17. An experiment on, and psyschometric analysis of, the contingent focus model
• 18. The contingent focus model and its relation to other theories
• 19. The mental ruler model: Qualitative and mathematical representations of contingent judgment
• 20. How attention arises in and influences decision-making
• 21. Escaping from bad decisions and future perspective
• Author Index
• Subject Index