Information versus reward in binary choices.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A Tversky.
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This paper considers the role of reasons and arguments in the making of decisions. It is proposed that, when faced with the need to choose, decision makers often seek and construct reasons in order to resolve the conflict and justify their choice, to themselves and to others. Experiments that explore and manipulate the role of reasons are reviewed, and other decision studies are interpreted from this perspective. The role of reasons in decision making is considered as it relates to uncertainty, conflict, context effects, and normative decision rules.
Research in cognitive psychology has indicated that alternative descriptions of the same event can give rise to different probability judgments. This observation has led to the development of a descriptive account, called support theory, which assumes that the judged probability of an explicit description of an event (that lists specific possibilities) generally exceeds the judged probability of an implicit description of the same event (that does not mention specific possibilities). To investigate this assumption in medical judgment, the authors presented physicians with brief clinical scenarios describing individual patients and elicited diagnostic and prognostic probability judgments. The results showed that the physicians tended to discount unspecified possibilities, as predicted by support theory. The authors suggest that an awareness of the discrepancy between intuitive judgments and the laws of chance may provide opportunities for improving medical decision making.