Professor: Robert Mauro

credits 4.00

• CRN 22642: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-3:20pm @ CHA 201

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. A core aspect of many professions (e.g., business, medicine, law) involves making decisions. 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 -- study decision-making. Psychologists in every major area within psychology (e.g., social, developmental, clinical, cognitive, cognitive-neuroscience) have studied decision-making. The ultimate goal of this work is to build an understanding of human decision-making and to use this understanding to improve our decisions. In this course, we will focus on the psychology of judgment and decision-making (JDM). However, links to other areas in psychology and other fields will be made.

By the end of the course, students should have a broad familiarity with the psychology of judgment and decision-making and be able to identify common decision-making problems and take effective steps to avoid them. In addition, students will learn and be able to use several common decision-making tools.

Students will be expected to actively participate in course exercises and discussions. In addition, the students will be asked to complete a series of problem sets designed to help them learn decision-making tools and to provide them with the opportunity to practice identifying decision-making problems and suggest evidence-based ways to avoid or mitigate these problems.