The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making

Rating:
Summary: Absolute joy to read
Review: Absolute joy to read both as educational and informative piece. People who master the decision making tactics of others can rule the world.

Rating:
Summary: Absolute joy to read
Review: Absolute joy to read both as educational and informative piece. People who master the decision making tactics of others can rule the world.

Rating:
Summary: Does not answer "How to make better decisions"
Review: After reading this book, your ability to make better decisions will improve a whopping zero. If you 1)want to learn how to make better decisions 2)like to save money because it is precious 3)never enjoyed that Psych 101 course in college despite upper classmen swearing you into believing you will learn the tricks to get the hottest babes, then do not buy this book. On the other hand, if you were a geek like me and enjoyed the self torture in order to obtain intellectual enlightment, then this book is definitely for you. This book will cites what seems like 2 million case studies to show you that humans cannot make right decisions worth crap. I kept reading this book to find the "how to" section on making right decisions, but there was none, making my decision to buy and read this book a wrong one.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining, educational and effective
Review: Scott Plous creates an effective learning experience by entrapping you into revealing your own personal psychology of decision-making...if only to yourself. It is an extremely entertaining and educational method that holds you from the first page to the last. Whether you're an academic interested in a useful textbook tool or a lay person, manager or other professional reliant on decision-making, you'll enjoy and appreciate this book.

Rating:
Summary: Best Introductory text book available
Review: Scott Plous' book about the psychology of judgement and decision making is one of the best books covering this topic I ever read. Very easy to understand, comprehensive, but always on a high level. This book is not only interesting for beginners, but for experts even. No difficult scientists' language. I read it from the first to last page.

Rating:
Summary: Changes the way you think about everything
Review: Simply put, this is one of those books that changes they way you think. It's one of those things that once you learn it, you wonder how you could've possibly gotten along in life without knowing it.

In a certain sense, I found this book disappointing. Disappointing, because after reading it, I excitedly searched for more information on the subject, but was unable to find another text nearly as accessible or informative in so few pages. Incredible.

Nevermind psychology, anyone interested in any form of political science or economics will find that this book opens a lot of philosophical doors they didn't know were there before, and changes the way they look at old problems or current rhetoric. An excellent intro to behavioral economics.

Rating:
Summary: A very good summary of a broad area.
Review: Since human judgment and decision making is a huge research and application area, it is very hard to find a comprehensive introduction as "The Psychology of Judgment of and Decision Making". Plous' book is both comprehensive and readable; the examples and the problems in relevant chapters of the book helps the reader easily understand what is the structure and function of decision making, and how one can improve his /her judgment. Suitable both for professionals and lay auidance.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and insightful.
Review: This is a fascinating book analyzing how we are all far less Cartesian than we think. In other words, a slew of predictable human bias flaws what we feel is our own objective judgment. The author eminently demonstrates this point by forcing the reader to take a 39 questions test at the beginning of the book. This test is stuffed with all the traps that illustrate the human judgment flaws that he analyzes thoroughly in following specific chapters.

You can view the test as a very entertaining IQ test from hell. The questions seem often simple. But, they are not. Other times, they are obviously difficult. I got a bit more than half of them correct. This was mainly because I had some knowledge or experience regarding certain traps the questions presented. I had made the mistake before. So, I learned from that. When I did not have any prior knowledge of a question, my results were very human, meaning not that good. But, learning the correct answer was both fun and educating.

The author touches on several fascinating probability and statistic concepts. One of them being the Bayes theorem, which suggests that medical screen test can be highly unreliable despite being touted as 80% to 90% accurate. In other words, you better understand the Bayes theorem better than the medical specialists who screen you for various diseases. Because, based on the author's study, doctors don't have a clue. Another chapter had an excellent discussion on correlation vs. causation. This includes some tricky nuances that many analysts in the financial industry trip upon. Another interesting probability concept is why it takes only 23 people in a room to have greater than a 50% that two of them share the same birthday. This seems impossible, but it is true.

The book has obviously a lot more than I am letting on here. I am not going to ruin it for you. It is really fun, educating, and interesting to read. You will also learn a whole lot about how you think, how others think, and how people think in groups. You will also understand how tricky it is to ask truly open and objective questions. Also, polls that seem objective are not due to the subjective structure of the question. I think you will enjoy this book, and I strongly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent and insightful.
Review: This is a fascinating book analyzing how we are all far less Cartesian than we think. In other words, a slew of predictable human bias flaws what we feel is our own objective judgment. The author eminently demonstrates this point by forcing the reader to take a 39 questions test at the beginning of the book. This test is stuffed with all the traps that illustrate the human judgment flaws that he analyzes thoroughly in following specific chapters.

You can view the test as a very entertaining IQ test from hell. The questions seem often simple. But, they are not. Other times, they are obviously difficult. I got a bit more than half of them correct. This was mainly because I had some knowledge or experience regarding certain traps the questions presented. I had made the mistake before. So, I learned from that. When I did not have any prior knowledge of a question, my results were very human, meaning not that good. But, learning the correct answer was both fun and educating.

The author touches on several fascinating probability and statistic concepts. One of them being the Bayes theorem, which suggests that medical screen test can be highly unreliable despite being touted as 80% to 90% accurate. In other words, you better understand the Bayes theorem better than the medical specialists who screen you for various diseases. Because, based on the author's study, doctors don't have a clue. Another chapter had an excellent discussion on correlation vs. causation. This includes some tricky nuances that many analysts in the financial industry trip upon. Another interesting probability concept is why it takes only 23 people in a room to have greater than a 50% that two of them share the same birthday. This seems impossible, but it is true.

The book has obviously a lot more than I am letting on here. I am not going to ruin it for you. It is really fun, educating, and interesting to read. You will also learn a whole lot about how you think, how others think, and how people think in groups. You will also understand how tricky it is to ask truly open and objective questions. Also, polls that seem objective are not due to the subjective structure of the question. I think you will enjoy this book, and I strongly recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: Changes the way you think about everything
Review: This is my first book on psychology for self-study. As the author puts in the preface, "the focus is on experimental findings rather than psychological theory, surprising conclusions rather than intuitions, and descriptive prose rather than mathematics."

The author tends to use nuclear weapon, war, and clinical examples more often than other topics in order to illustrate concepts. The examples are taken from actual empirical researches, including laboratory ones. Due to the purpose of the textbook, the examples are used to explain concepts, rather than to show how an experiment is designed or how "good" the experiment is in the sense of cause and effect. The bibliography list is correspondingly large given only some 260 pages. The author does not forget to provide tips on how to avoid particular biases presented in a given chapter. No exercises are provided at the end of each chapter, but a special section READER SURVEY given after preface asks you to answer 39 questions to be used in the main part of the text. No glossary is provided.

As I read through, I have warned myself not to generalize research results presented to be directly applicable to my life without careful thoughts. From my naïve point of view and based only on materials presented in the book, these research findings may be internally valid, but never guaranteed to work in any other circumstances or contexts. Such context dependence is treated explicitly in Chapter 4, but it all applies to any other concepts discussed throughout the book. The author warns this point to readers at the end of the book in Appendix. My suggestion for the next revision would be to include informal yet usable introduction on how to design an experiment that anyone could conduct without specialized devices or environment, so that readers can test biases that may be present in their own contexts.

As an example, having been an Amazon customer for a while, I see more votes on "yes" for reviews 4 and 5 stars than those on "no" for reviews 3 and below. The page is designed such that unaware people see most helpful review first, then most recent review in decreasing order by default. Your impression toward a book may change if you sort reviews by least helpful first or lowest rating first. Biases may be present in your purchase decision making processes. If you are curious about knowing some characterizations and explanations for them, this book may be for you.