Judgment and Decision-Making: In the Lab and the World

How do we make the judgments that inform our lives? Is there any way of consciously removing bias from the choices we make? What do our everyday personal decisions have in common with those made by groups, companies, and even nations? In this engaging and innovative textbook, Nancy Kim presents a multidisciplinary introduction to the dynamic field of judgment and decision-making. This lucidly written text delivers insights from cognitive psychology, aptly combining with interdependent findings from fields as diverse as neuropsychology, behavioural economics, social, developmental and clinical psychology, and philosophy. Offering not only a comprehensive explanation of the neurological structures and cognitive processes that underlie how we make decisions and form judgments in our everyday lives, readers can expect to learn the implications of these decisions upon an individual's prospects for health and longevity. Understanding behaviour is a central aspect of inquiry in the psychology discipline and as such this book is an essential companion for students taking undergraduate psychology, cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience courses; particularly those which include a module in judgment and decision-making. This text may also be helpful for undergraduate and postgraduate business courses on the subject. Accompanying online resources for this title can be found at bloomsburyonlineresources.com/judgment-and-decision-making. These resources are designed to support teaching and learning when using this textbook and are available at no extra cost.

Table of Contents:
1: Introduction 2: Representativeness and Availability 3: Hindsight Bias 4: Anchoring and Primacy Effects in Judgment 5: Mental Accounting and Choice 6: Schemas and Framework Theories 7: Expected Utility Theory 8: Framing Effects and Prospect Theory 9: Judging Covariation, Contingency, and Cause 10: Hypothesis Testing and Confirmation Bias 11: Risk Assessment 12: Prediction 13: Belief 14: Moral Judgment and Cooperation.

About the Author :
Nancy S. Kim is Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University, USA. Her research focuses on health-related judgment and decision-making by lay people, patients, clinical trainees and practicing clinicians. She teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on judgment and decision-making, cognitive psychology, and cognitive neuroscience.

Review :
Nancy Kim's comprehensive and engaging text is the perfect introduction to the exciting breadth of this increasingly recognised field in psychology. By describing its fundamental concepts and theories with clarity, it highlights many rich and insightful connections to applied problems. Judgement and Decision Making is sure to become a standard text for anyone wishing to learn about this major field of behavioural science. Nancy Kim is an extremely competent author with distinct content knowledge about judgment and decision-making. She has written a learned, comprehensive textbook with a unique approach: with links to developmental research. Nancy Kim covers the classic themes and includes some more surprising topics, such as Paranormal phenomena, which seems especially relevant in this era where scientific findings are sometimes openly doubted. I highly recommend this book.