JUDGMENT AND DECISION-MAKING - BEHAVIORAL-APPROACHES

The area of judgment and decision making has given rise to the study o f many interesting phenomena, including reasoning fallacies, which are also of interest to behavior analysts. Indeed, techniques and princip les of behavior analysis may be applied to study these fallacies. This article reviews research from a behavioral perspective that suggests that humans are not the information-seekers we sometimes suppose ourse lves to be. Nor do we utilize information effectively when it is prese nted. This is shown from the results of research utilizing matching to sample and other behavioral tools (monetary reward, feedback, instruc tional control) to study phenomena such as the conjunction fallacy, ba se-rate neglect, and probability matching. Research from a behavioral perspective can complement research from other perspectives in further ing our understanding of judgment and decision making.