Professor: Robert Mauro
4 credits
Every day you make decisions. Some seem trivial (e.g., what to have for breakfast). Some you may not notice making (e.g., when to cross a street). Other decisions can have deep and far-ranging consequences (e.g., whether to enter a relationship, where to go to college, whether to go to graduate school). Some decisions are made alone; others are made in groups. Making decisions is a core aspect of many professions (e.g., business, medicine, law). In this course, we will explore how people make decisions, how decisions can go bad, and how common errors in decision-making can be detected and avoided.
Scholars from many fields -- economics, history, political science, sociology, and every area within psychology -- study decision-making. The main goal of this work is to understand human decision-making and to use this understanding to improve our decisions and this is the goal of this course. Although we will focus primarily on the psychology of judgment and decision-making (JDM), links to other fields will be made.