Sampling in Judgment and Decision Making

Sampling approaches to judgment and decision making are distinct from traditional accounts in psychology and neuroscience. While these traditional accounts focus on limitations of the human mind as a major source of bounded rationality, the sampling approach originates in a broader cognitive-ecological perspective. It starts from the fundamental assumption that in order to understand intra-psychic cognitive processes one first has to understand the distributions of, and the biases built into, the environmental information that provides input to all cognitive processes. Both the biases and restriction, but also the assets and capacities, of the human mind often reflect, to a considerable degree, the irrational and rational features of the information environment and its manifestations in the literature, the Internet, and collective memory. Sampling approaches to judgment and decision making constitute a prime example of theory-driven research that promises to help behavioral scientists cope with the challenges of replicability and practical usefulness.

Klaus Fiedler is a Full Professor at Heidelberg University, Germany. He is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and a recipient of several science awards. Currently, he is Chief Editor of Perspectives on Psychological Science. His recent research has concentrated on judgment and decision making from a cognitive-ecological perspective.

Peter Juslin is Professor of Psychology at Uppsala University, Sweden, and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. His research primarily concerns judgment and decision making. He has published extensively in prominent psychology journals on topics related to subjective probability judgment, overconfidence, multiple-cue judgment, and risky decision making.

Jerker Denrell is Professor of Behavioral Science at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, UK. He previously held positions at University of Oxford, UK and Stanford University, USA. His work focuses on how the biased experiences available to people lead to systematic biases in choices and judgment. He has published numerous articles in Science, PNAS, and Psychological Review.