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. 1998 Fall;21(2):203–218. doi: 10.1007/BF03391964

Judgment and decision making: Behavioral approaches

Edmund Fantino
PMCID: PMC2731405  PMID: 22478308

Abstract

The area of judgment and decision making has given rise to the study of many interesting phenomena, including reasoning fallacies, which are also of interest to behavior analysts. Indeed, techniques and principles of behavior analysis may be applied to study these fallacies. This article reviews research from a behavioral perspective that suggests that humans are not the information-seekers we sometimes suppose ourselves to be. Nor do we utilize information effectively when it is presented. This is shown from the results of research utilizing matching to sample and other behavioral tools (monetary reward, feedback, instructional control) to study phenomena such as the conjunction fallacy, base-rate neglect, and probability matching. Research from a behavioral perspective can complement research from other perspectives in furthering our understanding of judgment and decision making.

Keywords: decision making, matching to sample, base-rate neglect, conjunction fallacy, probability learning, observing

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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