ABSTRACT
Most introductory chapters begin with a definition of the research area they are summarizing and applying. It seems difficult, however, to come up with a definition of judgment and decision making (JDM) research that is not tautological. We chose, therefore, to borrow (i.e., steal) a definition from another book on the topic. In Goldstein and Hogarth’s (1997) excellent book on the trends and controversies in JDM, the authors defined the psychology of judgment and decision making as the field that investigates the processes by which people draw conclusions, reach evaluations, and make choices. That seems as good as anything we might have come up with. But, there is something sterile and dissatisfying about this definition. It glosses over what Goldstein and Hogarth acknowledged is the broad and sometimes puzzling nature of a field that contains “a number of schools of thought that identify different issues as interesting and deem different methods as appropriate” (p. 3).
