ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I introduce a theory of decision making that emphasizes the fundamental importance of routines and affect in choice. In classical decision theories, neither routine nor affect has played a key role for a long time. Decision researchers almost exclusively focused on new decisions and thus neglected the importance of prior behavior. This neglect was at least partly caused by the dominance of the gambling paradigm—a research paradigm in which participants are asked to choose among artificial monetary lotteries. Values and probabilities in these problems are stated by the researcher. Prior experience rarely applies to such gambling problems. Most of the biases and anomalies that fill the textbooks were identified by studies using this research paradigm (see Goldstein & Hogarth, 1997, for an overview). Not surprisingly, decision theories were primarily designed to account for decision making in novel situations rather than to explain and predict everyday decisions involving experience and routines.
