Judgment And Decision Making As A Skill

Identifies how human judgment and decision making may evolve, develop and be learned or trained.

"Our scientific understanding of human Judgment and Decision Making (JDM) has grown considerably over the past 60 years in terms of the normative benchmarks (or standards) by which we assess performance, the descriptive models we use to describe JDM, and the prescriptive solutions we offer to improve JDM. Indeed, policy and practice in several domains such as education, management, and medicine have benefited from the findings of JDM research. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the theoretical literature and empirical research has discussed human JDM with little reference to its changing or dynamic nature. This is partly due to the historic coincidence that the field of JDM developed in competition with static economic models, such as expected utility theory, and to limiting methodological commitments such as investigating JDM in single-trial, cross-sectional studies with the primary focus on cognitively fully functioning adults"--

Employees are constantly making decisions and judgments that have the potential to affect themselves, their families, their work organizations, and on some occasion even the broader societies in which they live. A few examples include: deciding which job applicant to hire, setting a production goal, judging one’s level of job satisfaction, deciding to steal from the cash register, agreeing to help organize the company’s holiday party, forecasting corporate tax rates two years later, deciding to report a coworker for sexual harassment, and predicting the level of risk inherent in a new business venture. In other words, a great many topics of interest to organizational researchers ultimately reduce to decisions made by employees. Yet, numerous entreaties notwithstanding, industrial and organizational psychologists typically have not incorporated a judgment and decision-making perspective in their research. The current book begins to remedy the situation by facilitating cross-pollination between the disciplines of organizational psychology and decision-making. The book describes both laboratory and more “naturalistic” field research on judgment and decision-making, and applies it to core topics of interest to industrial and organizational psychologists: performance appraisal, employee selection, individual differences, goals, leadership, teams, and stress, among others. The book also suggests ways in which industrial and organizational psychology research can benefit the discipline of judgment and decision-making. The authors of the chapters in this book conduct research at the intersection of organizational psychology and decision-making, and consequently are uniquely positioned to bridging the divide between the two disciplines.

Children face an overwhelming amount of information and a range of different choices every day, and so there has never been a more important time to understand how children learn to make judgments and decisions in our modern world. Individual Differences in Judgment and Decision-Making presents cutting-edge developmental research to advance our knowledge and understanding of how these competencies emerge. Focusing on the role of individual differences, the text provides a complementary theoretical approach to understanding the development of judgment and decision-making skills, and how and why these competencies vary within and between different periods of development. Sampling a diverse set of developmental paradigms and measures, as well as considering typical and atypically developing samples, this volume provokes thinking about how we can support our children and youth to help them make better choices. Drawing on the expertise of a range of international contributors, this book will be of interest to students and researchers of thinking and reasoning from both cognitive and developmental psychology backgrounds.

In recent years, newspaper articles, television specials, and other media events have focused on the numerous hard decisions faced by today's youth, often pointing to teen pregnancy, drug use, and delinquency as evidence of faulty judgment. Over the past 10 years, many groups - including parents, educators, policymakers, and researchers - have become concerned about the decision-making abilities of children and adolescents, asking why they make risky choices, how they can be taught to be better decision makers, and what types of age-related changes occur in decision making. This book serves as a starting point for those interested in considering new ways of thinking about the development of these issues. The purpose is to bring together the voices of several authors who are conducting cutting-edge research and developing new theoretical perspectives related to the development of judgment and decision making. The Development of Judgment and Decision Making in Children and Adolescents is divided into three parts: Part I presents three distinctive developmental models that offer different explanations of "what develops" and the relative importance of different cognitive components and experiential components that may be important for developing judgment and decision making skills. Part II emphasizes the emotional, cultural, and social aspects of decision making--three topics that have been influential in the adult literature on judgment and decision making but are just beginning to be explored in the developmental area. Part III provides three examples of research that applies developmental and decision making models to practical research questions. This book is intended for the professional market or for graduate courses on decision making or cognitive or social development.

Employees are constantly making decisions and judgments that have the potential to affect themselves, their families, their work organizations, and on some occasion even the broader societies in which they live. A few examples include: deciding which job applicant to hire, setting a production goal, judging one’s level of job satisfaction, deciding to steal from the cash register, agreeing to help organize the company’s holiday party, forecasting corporate tax rates two years later, deciding to report a coworker for sexual harassment, and predicting the level of risk inherent in a new business venture. In other words, a great many topics of interest to organizational researchers ultimately reduce to decisions made by employees. Yet, numerous entreaties notwithstanding, industrial and organizational psychologists typically have not incorporated a judgment and decision-making perspective in their research. The current book begins to remedy the situation by facilitating cross-pollination between the disciplines of organizational psychology and decision-making. The book describes both laboratory and more “naturalistic” field research on judgment and decision-making, and applies it to core topics of interest to industrial and organizational psychologists: performance appraisal, employee selection, individual differences, goals, leadership, teams, and stress, among others. The book also suggests ways in which industrial and organizational psychology research can benefit the discipline of judgment and decision-making. The authors of the chapters in this book conduct research at the intersection of organizational psychology and decision-making, and consequently are uniquely positioned to bridging the divide between the two disciplines.

“With good judgment, little else matters. Without it, nothing else matters.” Whether we’re talking about United States presidents, CEOs, Major League coaches, or wartime generals, leaders are remembered for their best and worst judgment calls. In the face of ambiguity, uncertainty, and conflicting demands, the quality of a leader’s judgment determines the fate of the entire organization. That’s why judgment is the essence of leadership. Yet despite its importance, judgment has always been a fairly murky concept. The leadership literature has been conspicuously quiet on what, exactly, defines it. Does judgment differ from common sense or gut instinct? Is it a product of luck? Of smarts? Or is there a process for making consistently good calls? Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have each spent decades studying and teaching leadership and advising top CEOs such as Jack Welch and Howard Schultz. Now, in their first collaboration, they offer a powerful framework for making tough calls when the stakes are high and the right path is far from obvious. They show how to recognize the critical moment before a judgment call, when swift and decisive action is essential, and also how to execute a decision after the call. Tichy and Bennis bring their three-dimensional model to life with interviews with world-class leaders who have thrived or suffered because of their judgment calls. These stories include: • Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, whose judgment to grow through research and development transformed GE into the world’s premier technology growth company. • Joel Klein, chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, who made tough calls about teachers, students, and parents while turning around a troubled school system. • Jim McNerney, CEO of Boeing, whose strategic judgment helped him reinvigorate his company and restore a culture of trust and respect. • The late general Wayne Downing, who found an unexpected opportunity in the midst of crisis when he led the Special Operations raid to capture Manuel Noriega. • A. G. Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, who bet $57 billion to purchase Gillette and reinvent his company. • Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy, who made the call to commit totally to a customer-centric strategy and led his people to execute it. Whether you’re running a small department or a global corporation, Judgment will give you a framework for evaluating any situation, making the call, and correcting if necessary during the execution phase. It will show you how to handle the overlapping domains of people, strategy, and crisis management. And it will help you teach your entire team to make the right call more often. No organization can afford to neglect this crucial discipline—and no previous book has ever brought it into such clear focus.

In recent years, newspaper articles, television specials, and other media events have focused on the numerous hard decisions faced by today's youth, often pointing to teen pregnancy, drug use, and delinquency as evidence of faulty judgment. Over the past 10 years, many groups - including parents, educators, policymakers, and researchers - have become concerned about the decision-making abilities of children and adolescents, asking why they make risky choices, how they can be taught to be better decision makers, and what types of age-related changes occur in decision making. This book serves as a starting point for those interested in considering new ways of thinking about the development of these issues. The purpose is to bring together the voices of several authors who are conducting cutting-edge research and developing new theoretical perspectives related to the development of judgment and decision making. The Development of Judgment and Decision Making in Children and Adolescents is divided into three parts: Part I presents three distinctive developmental models that offer different explanations of "what develops" and the relative importance of different cognitive components and experiential components that may be important for developing judgment and decision making skills. Part II emphasizes the emotional, cultural, and social aspects of decision making--three topics that have been influential in the adult literature on judgment and decision making but are just beginning to be explored in the developmental area. Part III provides three examples of research that applies developmental and decision making models to practical research questions. This book is intended for the professional market or for graduate courses on decision making or cognitive or social development.