The Adaptive Decision Maker

The Adaptive Decision Maker argues that people use a variety of strategies to make judgments and choices. The authors introduce a model that shows how decision makers balance effort and accuracy considerations and predicts which strategy a person will use in a given situation. A series of experiments testing the model are presented, and the authors analyse how the model can lead to improved decisions and opportunities for further research.

Preface; 1. Adaptive decision behaviour: an introduction; 2. Contingencies in decision making; 3. Deciding how to decide: an effort/accuracy framework; 4. Studying contingent decisions: an integrated methodology; 5. Constructive processes in decision making; 6. Why may adaptivity fail?; 7. Improving decisions and other practical matters; 8. The adaptive decision maker: a look backward and a look forward; Appendix; Footnotes; Bibliography.

‘The Adaptive Decision Maker provides a compelling overview of the empirical results and conceptual framework that the authors have been pursuing in their research program over the last 15 years. The effort-accuracy framework represents an attempt to shift the research agenda from demonstrations of ‘irrationality’ in the form of heuristics and biases to an understanding of the causal mechanisms underlying the behaviour … a significant work for the field of behavioural decision making as a whole.’ John Carroll