About the Book
Ken Hammond has spent over a half-century analysing judgment and decision-making. His long-time focus has been on the dichotomy between judgment theories of correspondence (working to achieve empirical accuracy) and coherence (aiming for rationality and consistency) and the political consequences that can come from not understanding which of these theories people are following. In Beyond Rationality Hammond sums up his work and illustrates it with penetrating case studies on topics such as why Kennedy and Khruschev misunderstood each other, Colin Powell's misjudgments, the modes of thought on the Supreme Court, and much, much more. Hammond has changed the way academics think about decision making; with this book, he aims to show a larger audience why mistaken judgments happen, how to make better decisions, and how to understand the thought modes operating in the political process.
Table of Contents:
Part One
1: The new search for wisdom
2: Combating Uncertainty
Part Two: Strategies of Human Judgment
3: The Strategy of Seeking Correspondence Competence
4: The (Mis)Judgments of Colin Powell
5: The Strategy of Seeking Coherence Competence
6:
7: How the Drive for Coherence Brings down Utopias
Part Three: Tactics of Human Judgment
8: Continuums
9: The Cognitive Continuum at the Supreme Court
10: Intuition: Seeking Empirical Accuracy the Easy Way
11: Analysis: Seeking Empirical the Hard Way
12: Intuition: Seeking Rationality the Easy Way
13: Analysis: Seeking Rationality the Hard Way
14: Robert Rubin: Embedded in an Uncertain World
Part Four: Themes Guiding Research
15: Current Themes
16: The Author's Theme
Part Five: Conclusion
17: Trying to Learn from History with Bernard Lewis and Jared Diamond
18: Toward Better Practices
19: Ineptitude and the Tools of War
20: The New Search for Wisdom
About the Author :
Kenneth R. Hammond is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Former Director of the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision-Making, he is the author of Judgments Under Stress (OUP, 1999), Human Judgment and Social Policy (OUP, 1996) and editor of The Essential Brunswik (OUP, 2001).
Review :
"In this rich and rewarding work Ken Hammond has further developed and fleshed out the major themes of his previous seminal work, Human Judgment and Social Policy. Beyond Rationality provides a stream of fresh and up-to-the-minute insights into the way in which failure to accept the need for appropriately balanced oscillation between correspondent-focused intuition and coherence-focused analysis perpetuates death, destruction, misery and poor
decisions at all levels. Those academic schools, as well as political and religious empires, which insist on privileging a particular cognitive strategy (coherence or correspondence) while predominantly using (or
abusing) a particular cognitive tactic (analysis or intuition) emerge as the twin obstacles to the humble wisdom required in an age of irreducible uncertainty." --Jack Dowie, Emeritus Professor of Health Impact Analysis, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
"Rationality is a difficult, if not impossible, concept with which to judge people's actions. And yet, we all need some concepts of rationality to guide our behavior. In this fascinating book, Ken Hammond goes beyond rationality to discuss the essence of wisdom by using findings and concepts from basic research on judgment and decision making. There is much wisdom in this volume that elucidates and extends notions of rational behavior." --Robin M. Hogarth,
Department of Economics & Business, ICREA and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
"Blink or think? Intuition or reason? Drawing heavily on 50 years of scientific research on judgment and decision making, Hammond demonstrates the necessity of both styles of thought. The truly wise among us, he observes, are those with the mental agility to adaptively tailor our thinking style to the problem at hand. Obvious? It must not be, given the seemingly never ending tug-of-war between adherents of cool reason and gut intuition. Hammond's theory of
wisdom couldn't come at a better time to a world where success and failure are increasingly defined by how well we cope with uncertainty." --Alex Kirlik, Professor of Human Factors, Industrial Engineering,
and Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"We all make decisions, and we hope that they are wise ones. In Beyond Rationality Ken Hammond guides us on the journey from rationalism and romanticism to wisdom. He draws on psychology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and politics to give us insight not only into our own judgment processes, but also into those of great thinkers throughout our history. With insightful and incisive style, Hammond translates scholarly research into everyday
language. He takes the strategies and tactics of judgment and decision-making theory and demonstrates how readers can use them in the search for wisdom in a troubled time."
--Kathleen Mosier, Chair, Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University
"In this rich and rewarding work Ken Hammond has further developed and fleshed out the major themes of his previous seminal work, Human Judgment and Social Policy. Beyond Rationality provides a stream of fresh and up-to-the-minute insights into the way in which failure to accept the need for appropriately balanced oscillation between correspondent-focused intuition and coherence-focused
analysis perpetuates death, destruction, misery and poor decisions at all levels. Those academic schools, as well as political and religious empires, which insist on privileging a particular cognitive strategy (coherence or correspondence) while predominantly
using (or abusing) a particular cognitive tactic (analysis or intuition) emerge as the twin obstacles to the humble wisdom required in an age of irreducible uncertainty." --Jack Dowie, Emeritus Professor of Health Impact Analysis, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
"Rationality is a difficult, if not impossible, concept with which to judge people's actions. And yet, we all need some concepts of rationality to guide our behavior. In this fascinating book, Ken Hammond goes beyond rationality to discuss the essence of wisdom by using findings and concepts from basic research on judgment and decision making. There is much wisdom in this volume that elucidates and extends notions of rational behavior." --Robin M. Hogarth,
Department of Economics & Business, ICREA and Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
"Blink or think? Intuition or reason? Drawing heavily on 50 years of scientific research on judgment and decision making, Hammond demonstrates the necessity of both styles of thought. The truly wise among us, he observes, are those with the mental agility to adaptively tailor our thinking style to the problem at hand. Obvious? It must not be, given the seemingly never ending tug-of-war between adherents of cool reason and gut intuition. Hammond's theory of
wisdom couldn't come at a better time to a world where success and failure are increasingly defined by how well we cope with uncertainty." --Alex Kirlik, Professor of Human Factors, Industrial Engineering,
and Psychology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
"We all make decisions, and we hope that they are wise ones. In Beyond Rationality Ken Hammond guides us on the journey from rationalism and romanticism to wisdom. He draws on psychology, philosophy, anthropology, economics, and politics to give us insight not only into our own judgment processes, but also into those of great thinkers throughout our history. With insightful and incisive style, Hammond translates scholarly research into everyday
language. He takes the strategies and tactics of judgment and decision-making theory and demonstrates how readers can use them in the search for wisdom in a troubled time."
--Kathleen Mosier, Chair, Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University
