A Primer of Judgment and Decision Making

The book is intended as a primer and discusses the main areas within judgment and decision making. However, these topics are not siloed. Instead, a narrative arc throughout the book has a higher level of critical appraisal of the key concepts and how they relate to some of the big questions about the nature of human rationality. The book begins by introducing two perspectives on rationality. The first describes how we decide on the goodness of a decision. This is a surprisingly recent concept called Rational Choice Theory, which was formed from a collection of books written around the time of the Second World War, that deal with how we think about risk as a probability and goodness as utility. In short, Rational Choice Theory argues that to be rational, people should always make the decision that maximizes subjective expected utility. The book goes on to describe the consensus view that emerged in the late 1960s and came to dominate our thinking about decision making, namely that people rarely make rational decisions. In fact, many Nobel prizes have been handed out for work showing that humans are not rational creatures (e.g. Daniel Kahneman, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller). The book concludes with recent theoretical developments in our understanding of how people make decisions that reconcile Rational Choice Theory with human irrationality.

Although aimed primarily at second year undergraduates studying judgement and decision making as a core component of cognitive psychology, the book will also be relevant to third year electives in and MSc programmes. The book will also interest undergraduates studying economics, and undergraduates studying more general degrees in liberal arts or natural science. As an introductory text the book assumes no prior knowledge of judgement and decision making, cognitive psychology or economics. However, the level of the book assumes that the reader is familiar with academic texts and has experience of critical thinking. A key requirement of the reader is a willingness to relate academic concepts to the real world, and to try and understand the bigger picture about human psychology and its place in society.

Richard Tunney is a Professor of Psychology at Aston University in the United Kingdom. He has over 25 years of experience conducting research and teaching in cognitive-experimental psychology at several prestigious universities. Professor Tunney studied for his first degree at the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the University of Sussex before moving to the University of York to conduct his doctoral research on implicit learning funded by the Medical Research Council. After this, he was appointed Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Economic Learning and Social Evolution at University College London, where he researched Rational Choice Theory and prosocial behaviour. He took his first lectureship at Keele University before becoming an Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham, where he stayed for 14 years. In 2018, he became a Professor of Psychology and Head of School at Aston University.

Professor Tunney is an active member of several professional bodies, including the Experimental Psychology Society and the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. He is a founding member and Chair of Research in the Academic Forum for the Study of Gambling (AFSG.org.uk). This body both awards research grants funded by regulatory settlements from the Gambling Commission and acts to coordinate scientific evidence to influence public and health policy.

Professor Tunney's research focuses on judgement and decision making, specifically regarding Rational Choice Theory, surrogate decision Making, prosocial behaviour, and behavioural addictions such as gambling and gaming. He has published close to 100 articles and chapters.