Reasoning and Decision Making: (Cognition S.)

This volume brings together two separate aspects of the psychology of thinking: how people reason; and how they make judgements and decisions. These aspects are often interwoven in real life, so students of decision-making are increasingly examining the role of reasoning in the construction of preferences in reasoning. Also, research in the two domains has revealed a striking parallel: human thinkers make radical departures from the canons of rationality - from formal logic in the case of reasoning, and from expected utility theory in the case of decision-making. These two departures have forced social scientists to think again about the nature of human mentality. The chapters in this book cover the nature of rationality, how individuals construct reasons for choices, how they are led astray by focusing on only certain aspects of situations, how they assess the strength of inductions, how they reach decisions on juries and how their performance can be improved. "Reasoning and Decision Making" should be of interest to advanced undergraduates and beyond, and to psychologists, decision theorists and philosophers.

Table of Contents:
1. The interaction between reasoning and decision-making: P.N. Johnson-Laird and Eldar Shafir (both of Princeton University). 2. Reason-based choice: Eldar Shafir, Itamar Simonson and Amos Tversky (Princeton University, Stanford University and Stanford University). 3. Focusing in reasoning and decision-making: P. Legrenzi, Vi Girotto and P.N. Johnson-Laird (Universita degli Studi di Trieste, Universita degli Studi di Trieste and Princeton University). 4. Similarity, plausibility and judgements of probability: Edward Smith, Eldar Shafir and Daniel Osherson (University of Michigan, Princeton University and IDIAP, Switzerland). 5. De-bias the environment instead of the judge: an alternative approach to reducing error in diagnostic judgement: Joshua Klayman and Kaye Brown (University of Chicago and National Center for Health Program Evaluation, Australia). 6. Reasoning in explanation-based decision-making: Nancy Pennington and Reid Haste (both at University of Colorado). 7. Reasoning, decision-making and rationality: Jonathan St B.T. Evans, D.E. Over and K.I. Manktelow (University of Plymouth, University of Sunderland and University of Wolverhampton).

About the Author :
P. N. Johnson-Laird is Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, and is a fellow of the Royal Society and the British Academy. His research interests are: psycholinguistics and the theory of meaning; thinking, reasoning and creativity; and emotions and consciousness. Eldar Shafir is Associate Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, and was the recipient of the 1992 Hillel Einhorn New Investigator Award, and the 1993 Chase Memorial Award.