The Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded in 2002 for work on judgment and decision-making tasks that are the operational measures of rational thought in cognitive science. Because assessments of intelligence (and similar tests of cognitive ability) are taken to be the quintessence of good thinking, it might be thought that such measures would…

This document notes that researchers study the processes involved in judgment and decision making and prescribe theories and models that reflect the behavior of the decision makers. It addresses the various models that are used to represent judgment and decision making, with particular interest in models that more accurately represent human…

Hammond's Cognitive Continuum theory posits that certain task features induce distinct processing modes (e.g., intuitive or analytic) and thus result in qualitatively different decision performance. Although the theory suggests the relation between task features and performance characteristics a priori, the validity of these predictions requires…

Policy makers use past experience and history to think about current and potential problems and to explain policies and problems to others. Decision makers may be overly influenced by significant personally-experienced events that loom so large in their eyes that details and related relevant information may pale in comparison. Deficiencies in…

Tacit knowledge is a generally unarticulated, preconscious form of knowledge that forms a basis for human judgment and decision making. Tacit knowledge is acquired primarily through experience, usually observation of and working with "qualified" teachers or mentors. Tacit knowledge may also be described as "practical," that is,…

A study conducted in Columbus, Ohio, assessed the importance of voter uncertainty in motivating media use and use of specific campaign information. Data were collected from a telephone survey of 540 persons registered to vote in Columbus or surrounding Franklin County. Decisional difficulty, likelihood of vote change, and knowledge about the…

One problem confronting theater directors is how to revive a play in such a way as to give it new relevance to a contemporary audience, and there many unhappy examples of this dilemma. Each director is concerned with exploring the text, and in some cases, manipulating the content, in order to bring out new meanings. Whether controversial or…

Social theories (beliefs about relationships between variables in the social environment) are often used in making judgments, predictions, or decisions. Three experiments on the role of explanation processes in the development and use of social theories were conducted. The first experiment assessed the effects of explaining a hypothetical…

The concept of due process provides an analogy for the process of standard setting that emphasizes many of the procedural and substantive elements of the process over technical and statistical concerns. Surely such concerns can and should continue to be addressed. However, a sound rationale for standard setting does not rest on this foundation.…

In 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) published the Guidelines on Sexual Harassment, specifying that sexual harassment is a kind of sex discrimination under Title VII and is an unlawful employment practice. While the determination of the behaviors that constitute sexual harassment would enable employees to write more…

This research project studied the relationship between teachers' thinking and action, specifically, teachers' implicit theories in the subfield of evaluation. Particular focus was upon the way teachers generate their theories about teaching, the structure and content of such theories, and their influence on decisions and intructional practices.…

How teachers evaluate the various instructional methods at their disposal is the question addressed in this paper. The issue is examined in an effort to determine which of certain models of teaching some teachers prefer, how teachers categorize models of teaching, and which factors are associated with their preferences. Results suggest that role…

Reports on a study of people's decision making with respect to quality and authority on the World Wide Web. Seven facets of judgment of information quality were identified: source, content, format, presentation, currency, accuracy, and speed of loading. Institutional and individual authority was identified as an underlying theme in source…

Failure to separate judicial reasoning (the application of rules) from legislative reasoning (the justification of rules) in earlier studies is claimed to invalidate most previous developmental research using moral dilemma interviews. Two studies used a novel method of scoring moral dilemma interviews that separates judicial from legislative…

This exploratory study examined the college search processes of 25 non-traditional adult students at two central New York State community colleges. Using a modified time-line interview, a method developed in communication and information sciences, the researchers found that the college student's choice process was significantly different for the…