Decision psychology and swine flu

Behavioral economist (and 2009 President of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making) Dan Ariely appeared on NPR’s Marketplace to discuss reasons for the swine flu panic. Read or listen to the interview here. He focuses on the difference between the value of an identified life and a statistical life, as well as the impact […]

Symposia from SJDM/SMDM online

The 2008 annual meetings of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (SJDM) and the Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM) included a “symposium exchange”. A symposium by SJDM members was presented at SMDM 2008 (Pennsylvania, PA) and a symposium by SMDM members was presented at SJDM 2008 (Chicago, IL). At least one of the […]

GUT decision-making

I was recently at a workshop for National Science Foundation Principal Investigators focused on how to communicate research to the public and the media. One of the suggestions was to develop a three-word summary of the principle message of your research work. This is hard.

The prediction problem

A major problem in all preference or utility assessment, particularly holistic assessments that require the visualization of a health state in its entirety, is that people must often be asked to assess their preferences for health states that they have not yet experienced. That is, they must predict how they will feel about future health […]