It is only just recently that people have the tools to judge how well they are doing when making decisions. These tools were conceptualized in the seventeenth century. Since then many people have worked to sharpen the concepts, and to explore how these can be applied further. The problems of decision-making and the theory developed correspondingly have drawn the interest of mathematicians, psychologists, statisticians, economists, philosophers, organizational experts, sociologists, not only for their general relevance, but also for a more intrinsic fascination. There are quite a few institutionalized activities to disseminate results and stimulate research in decision-making. For about a decade now a European organizational structure, centered mainly around the psy­ chological interest in decision-making. There have been conferences in Hamburg, Amsterdam, Uxbridge, Rome and Darmstadt. Conference papers have been partly published+. The organization has thus stabilized, and its re­ latively long history makes it interesting to see what kind of developments occurred, within the area of interest.

Inhalt

I: Approaches to Real-Life Situations: Problems of Improvement.- Editors' Introduction.- Cognitive Processes and Societal Risk Taking.- Cognitive Processes and Societal Risk Taking/Comments.- The Use of Credible Intervals in Temperature Forecasting: Some Experimental Results.- Decisions Concerning Job Choice.- The Application of Multi-Attribute Utility Models to some Uncertain Decision Situations in Areas of Business and Public Policy.- Influence of Attribute Formulation on the Evaluation of Apartments by Multi-Attribute Utility Procedures.- Modelling Preferences among Distributions Using Fuzzy Relations.- Subjective Probability Elicitation: A Comparison of Performance Variables.- Rewarding Expertise in Probability Assessment.- The Psychology of the Ouija Board.- II: Analysis and Improvement of Models and Methods.- Editors' Introduction.- Application of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory 165.- Applications of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory/Comments.- "Motivational" Components of Utility.- Methods for Aggregating Opinions.- Methods for Aggregating Opinions/Comments.- The Continuous Ranked Probability Score in Practice.- Calibration of Probabilities: The State of the Art.- Calibration of Probabilities: The State of the Art/Comments.- Consistency of Future Event Assessments.- A Study of Intransitive Preferences Using a Think Aloud Procedure.- III: Perspectives for Further Inquiry in Decision Theory.- Editors' Introduction.- Measurement and Interpretation of Beliefs.- Measurement and Interpretation of Beliefs/Comments.- Decision Making and Cognition.- Decision Making and Cognition/Comments.- Cognitive Functions in Decision Making.- Optimal Policies, Degradation, and Cognition.- Optimal Policies, Degradation, and Cognition/Comments.- Decision Making and Numerical Structuring.- Bayesian Statistics and Efficient Information Processing Constrained by Probability Models.- Praxiology and Decision Theory.- Cultural Differences in Viewing Uncertainty and Assessing Probabilities.- Index of Names.