Every week I am providing comments and questions on the current
reading assignments. Their major functions are Below you can access both the comments on a given reading
assignment and the lecture handout that corresponds to that reading.
Please email me if you have
comments or questions regarding the readings.
1 Social partner choice (Sept 26; lecture
handout )
* Buss, D. M., & Schmitt,
D. P. (1993). Sexual Strategies Theory: An evolutionary
perspective on human mating. Psychological Review, 100, 204-232.
2 Choices and consequences (Oct 3; lecture
handout )
* Shafir, E., Simonson, I., & Tversky,
A. (1993). Reason-based choice. Special Issue: Reasoning and decision
making. Cognition, 49, 11-36.
3 Expected utility theory (Oct 5; lecture handout )
* Malle, B. F. (1995). An
introduction to judgment and decision making from a folk-theoretical
perspective. Unpublished Manuscript, University of Oregon.
ch 8:
Paradoxes in rationality
4 Normative and descriptive models of decision making (Oct 10; lecture handout )
ch 9: Descriptive models of decision making
* Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984).
Choices, values, and frames. American
Psychologist, 39, 341-350.
*
Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler,
R. H. (1991). The endowment effect, loss aversion, and status quo
bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5, 193-206.
5 Framing and context (Oct 12; lecture
handout )
ch 6: The effects of question wording and framing
6 Decisions in a social setting (Oct 17; lecture handout )
ch 18:
Group judgments and decisions
MIDTERM EXAM (Oct 19)
7 Adopting, maintaining, and giving up beliefs (Oct 24; lecture handout )
ch 1: Selective perception
ch 20: Self-fulfilling prophecies
* Gilbert, D. T. (1991).How mental systems believe.
American Psychologist,
46, 107-119.
* Dawes, R. M. (1988).Giving up (ch. 11), in R. M. Dawes,
Rational choice in an uncertain world (pp. 230-253). Fort
Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
8 Conditional probability, Bayes' theorem (Oct 26; lecture handout )
9 Signal detection theory (Oct 31; lecture handout )
* McNicol, D. (1972). What are statistical decisions?
In D. McNicol, A primer of signal detection theory
(ch. 1). London: Allen & Unwin.
10 Perception of chance and risk (Nov 2;
lecture handout )
ch 14: The perception of randomness
* Tversky, A., & Gilovich, T. (1989).
The cold facts about the "hot hand"
in basketball. Chance, 2, 16-21.
* Slovic, P. (1987). Perception of risk.
Science, 236, 280-285.
11 Heuristics and biases (Nov 7;
lecture handout )
ch 10: The representativeness heuristic
ch 11: The availability heuristic
ch 13: Anchoring and adjustment
* Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgment under uncertainty:
Heuristics and biases. Science, 185, 1124-1131.
12 Whose biases? (Nov 9;
lecture handout )
* Schwarz, N. (1994). Judgment in a social context: Biases,
shortcomings, and the logic of con-versation. In M. P. Zanna (ed.), Advances
in experminetal social psychology, 26, 123-162.
* Funder, D. C. (1987).
Errors and mistakes: Evaluating the accuracy of social
judgment. Psychological Bulletin, 101, 75-90.
13 Prediction (Nov 14;
lecture handout )
ch 10: The representativeness heuristic [review]
ch 15: Correlation, causation, and control
* Kahneman, D., & Miller, D. T. (1986).
Norm theory: Comparing reality to
its alternatives. Psychological Review, 93, 136-153.
* Hilton, D. J. (1990).
Conversational processes and causal explanation.
Psychological Bulletin, 107, 65-81.
15 Self-deception and self-regulation(Nov 21;
lecture handout )
* Schelling, T. C. (1984). The mind as a consuming organ. In T. C.
Schelling, Choice and consequence (pp. 328-346). Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
* Quattrone, G. A., & Tversky, A. (1984).
Causal versus diagnostic
contingencies: On self-deception and on the voter's illusion. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 237-248.
16 Things to avoid and how to do better(Nov 28;
lecture handout )
ch 3: Memory and hindsight biases
ch 21: Behavioral traps
Afterword: Taking a step back
FINAL EXAM (Wednesday, Dec 6, 3:15 p.m.)
Reading assignments
Chapters are from the textbook, Plous, S. (1993). The psychology
of judgment and decision making. New York: McGraw-Hill. Articles
(indicated by *) are from the course packet.