Rational Choice in an Uncertain World (First Printing) The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making

This book will publish in a new edition on November 17, 2009. We are no longer supplying instructors with complimentary review copies of this edition.* Please click here to request a review copy of the new edition.

* If you need an urgent desk copy of the existing edition for a class this semester, please call 1-800-818-7243 and we will be pleased to process your request.

When faced with an important decision, we are often on our own to think through what we might do and what the probable consequences of out behaviors are. As we make these judgements, it is important that we be able to communicate precisely and fluently with one another. In Rational Choice in an Uncertain World, renowned authors Hastie and Dawes compare the basic principles of rationality with actual behavior in making decisions. They describe theories and research finding from the field of judgment and decision making in a non-technical manner, using anecdotes as a teaching device. Intended as an introductory textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate students, the material not only is of scholarly interest but is practical as well.

In this volume, you′ll find:

• New, student-friendly chapter introductions and conclusions
• Practical, everyday examples from the fields of finance, medicine, law and engineering
• Comprehensive, up-to-date information keeping pace with changing ideas within the field

Additional discussion of the descriptive, psychological models of decision making to expand upon the original emphasis on normative, rational, expected utility models 

Reid Hastie has degrees from Stanford University (1968), the University of California at San Diego (1970), and Yale University (1973) in Psychology. He taught at Harvard University, Northwestern University, and now at the University of Colorado where he is currently Professor of Psychology and Director of the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy. He has served on review panels for the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Research Council; and on fourteen professional journal editorial boards. His research has been funded continuously by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health since 1975.

His primary research interests are in the areas of judgment and decision making (managerial, legal, medical, engineering, and personal), memory and cognition, and social psychology. He has published over 100 articles in scientific journals on these topics. He is best known for his research on legal decision making (Social Psychology in Court [with Michael Saks]; Inside the Jury [with Steven Penrod and Nancy Pennington]; Inside the Juror [edited]; and Punitive Damages: How Juries Decide [forthcoming, multiple authors]) and on social memory and judgment processes (Person Memory: The Cognitive Basis of Social Perception [several co-authors]). He is currently studying: the psychology of investment decisions; the role of explanations in category concept representations (including the effects on category classification, deductive, and inductive inferences); civil jury decision making (punitive damages and sexual harassment); the primitive sources of confidence and probability judgments; decision making competencies across the adult life span; and neural substrates of risky decisions. He is writing a textbook on the Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making in collaboration with Robyn Dawes (of Carnegie Mellon University) and has recently completed an Annual Review of Psychology chapter, “Problems for Judgment and Decision Making.”