This paper explores a heuristic-representativeness-according to which the subjective probability of an event, or a sample, is determined by the degree to which it: (i) is similar in essential characterisitcs to its parent population; and (ii) reflects the salient features of the process by which it is generated. This heuristic is explicated in a series of empirical examples demonstrating predictable and systematic errors i the evaluation of uncertain events.

Abstract

Risk is perceived and acted on in 2 fundamental ways. Risk as feelings refers to individuals’ fast, instinctive, and intuitive reactions to danger. Risk as analysis brings logic, reason, and scientific deliberation to bear on risk management. Reliance on risk as feelings is described with “the affect heuristic.” The authors trace the development of this heuristic across a variety of research paths.

Summary. The psychologicalprinciplesthat govern the perceptionof decision prob- lems and the evaluation of probabilities and outcomes produce predictable shifts of preference when the same problem is framed in different ways. Reversals of prefer- ence are demonstrated in choices regarding monetary outcomes, both hypothetical and real, and in questions pertaining to the loss of human lives.

Author's Preface

This paper is concerned with three questions: How do decision makers conceptualize uncertainty? How do decision makers cope with uncertainty? Are there systematic relationships between different conceptu- alizations of uncertainty and different methods of cop- ing? To answer these questions we analyzed 102 self- reports of decision-making under uncertainty with an inclusive method of classifying conceptualizations of uncertainty and coping mechanisms developed from the decision-making literature.

Objective: This article describes the origins and contributions of the naturalistic decision making (NDM) research approach.

Background: NDM research emerged in the 1980s to study how people make decisions in real-world settings.

Cultural cognition is one of a variety of approaches designed to empirically test the “cultural theory of risk” set forth by Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky. The basic premise of cultural theory is that individuals can be expected to form beliefs about societal dangers that reflect and reinforce their commitments to one or another idealized form of social ordering.