Ebook: Decision Theory and Decision Behaviour: Normative and Descriptive Approaches

This book presents the content of a year's course in decision processes for third and fourth year students given at the University of Toronto. A principal theme of the book is the relationship between normative and descriptive decision theory. The distinction between the two approaches is not clear to everyone, yet it is of great importance. Normative decision theory addresses itself to the question of how people ought to make decisions in various types of situations, if they wish to be regarded (or to regard themselves) as 'rational'. Descriptive decision theory purports to describe how people actually make decisions in a variety of situations. Normative decision theory is much more formalized than descriptive theory. Especially in its advanced branches, normative theory makes use of mathematicallanguage, mode of discourse, and concepts. For this reason, the definitions of terms encountered in normative decision theory are precise, and its deductions are rigorous. Like the terms and assertions of other branches of mathematics, those of mathematically formalized decision theory need not refer to anything in the 'real', i. e. the observable, world. The terms and assertions can be interpreted in the context of models of real li fe situations, but the verisimilitude of the models is not important. They are meant to capture only the essentials of adecision situation, which in reallife may be obscured by complex details and ambiguities. It is these details and ambiguities, however, that may be crucial in determining the outcomes of the decisions.

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Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-x
Introduction....Pages 1-7
Front Matter....Pages 9-9
Orders and Scales....Pages 11-24
Optimization....Pages 25-54
Decisions under Uncertainty....Pages 55-67
Decisions under Risk....Pages 68-96
Subjective Aspects of Risk....Pages 97-121
Multi-Objective Decisions....Pages 122-142
Theory of Social Choice....Pages 143-158
Individual Psychology of Decision-Making....Pages 159-174
Front Matter....Pages 175-175
Two-Person Constant Sum Games....Pages 177-196
Some Topics in Continuous Games....Pages 197-215
Two-Person Non-Constant Sum Games....Pages 216-236
Psychological Pressures in Non-Cooperative Games....Pages 237-251
Theory of Voting....Pages 252-269
Social Traps....Pages 270-288
Front Matter....Pages 289-289
Two-Person Cooperative Games....Pages 291-316
The Allocation Problem....Pages 317-335
Indices of Power....Pages 336-349
Theories of Coalition Formation....Pages 350-368
Front Matter....Pages 369-381
Psychology of Collective Decision-Making....Pages 289-289
Concluding Remarks....Pages 382-399
Back Matter....Pages 400-408
....Pages 409-432