Decision Making

Arthur B. Markman

Department of Psychology

University of Texas at Austin

This class explores research on decision making from early psychological work testing normative models of choice, through the work on heuristics and biases to more current approaches that explore the continuity of decision making behavior with other psychological processes.  The current approaches will also explore the influence of motivation on choice as well as decision making in a variety of naturalistic settings.  

Day 1:  Normative approaches to decision making

Markman, A. B., & Medin, D. L. (2002). Decision making. In D. L. Medin & H. Pashler (Eds.), Stevens Handbook of Experimental Psychology (pp. 413-466). New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Shafir, D., & LeBoeuf, R. A. (2002). Rationality. Annual Review of Psychology, 53, 491-517.

Additional Readings

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory:  An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263-291.

Day 2:  The Heuristics and Biases tradition

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984). Choices, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39(4), 341-350.

Gigerenzer, G., & Goldstein, D. G. (1996). Reasoning the fast and frugal way:  Models of bounded rationality. Psychological Review, 103(4), 650-669.

Additional Readings

Payne, J. W., Bettman, J. R., & Johnson, E. J. (1988). Adaptive strategy selection in decision making. Journal of Experimental Psychology:  Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14(3), 534-552.

Day 3:  Choice processes

Kahneman, D., Knetsch, J. L., & Thaler, R. H. (1991). Anomalies:  The endowment effect, loss aversion and status quo bias. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 5(1), 193-206.

Shafir, E., Simonson, I., & Tversky, A. (1993). Reason-based choice. Cognition, 49, 11-36.

Additional Readings

Loewenstein, G. F., Weber, E. U., Hsee, C. K., & Welch, N. (2001). Risk as feelings. Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 267-286.

Moreau, C. P., Markman, A. B., & Lehman, D. R. (2001). 'What is it?' Categorization flexibility and consumers' responses to really new products. Journal of Consumer Research, 27, 489-498.

Day 4:  Motivation and choice

Higgins, E. T. (2000). Making a good decision:  Value from fit. American Psychologist, 55, 1217-1230.

Markman, A. B., Brendl, C. M., & Kim, K. (2009). From goal activation to action:  How does preference and use of knowledge intervene? In E. Morsella, J. A. Bargh & P. M. Gollwitzer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of human action (pp. 328-349). New York: Oxford University Press.

Additional Readings

Kruglanski, A. W., Shah, J. Y., Fishbach, A., Friedman, R., Chun, W. Y., & Sleeth-Keppler, D. (2002). A theory of goal systems. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 331-378.

Lee, A. Y., & Aaker, J. L. (2004). Bringing the frame into focus:  The influence of regulatory fit on processing fluency and persuasion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(2), 205-218.

Markman, A. B., Beer, J. S., Grimm, L. R., Rein, J. R., & Maddox, W. T. (2009). The optimal level of fuzz: Case studies in a methodology for psychological research. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 21(3), 197-215.

Day 5:  Consumer choice and naturalistic decision making

Klein, G. (2008). Naturalistic decision making. Human Factors, 50(3), 456-460.

Loken, B. (2006). Consumer psychology:  Categorization, inferences, affect, and persuasion. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 453-485.

Additional readings

Broniarczyk, S. M., & Alba, J. W. (1994). The importance of the brand in brand extension. Journal of Marketing Research, 31, 214-228.

Holyoak, K. J., & Simon, D. (1999). Bidirectional reasoning in decision making. Journal of Experimental Psychology:  General, 128(1), 3-31.

Zhang, S., & Markman, A. B. (1998). Overcoming the early entrant advantage:  The role of alignable and nonalignable differences. Journal of Marketing Research, 35, 413-426.

Seminars

During the seminars, we will discuss aspects of specific models of choice and explore experimental design methods appropriate for testing models of choice.

Assessment

Students will be assessed on the basis of a 5-page (double-spaced) paper that proposes a new research question.

About the instructor

Arthur B. Markman received his PhD in 1992 from the University of Illinois.  After that, he worked at Northwestern University and Columbia University before moving to the University of Texas in 1998 where he is now the Annabel Irion Worsham Centennial Professor of Psychology and Marketing.  His research explores a variety of aspects of higher-level cognition including similarity and analogy, decision making, categorization, motivation, and knowledge representation.  He has published over 130 scholarly papers and has written or edited 8 books.  He also writes a blog for Psychology Today called Ulterior Motives.  Dr. Markman is a former Executive Officer of the Cognitive Science Society.  He has served as associate editor of a number of journals and is now the executive editor of Cognitive Science.