Judgement and Decision Making

‘‘Good’’ judgement and decision making is relevant for many everyday situations. This interdisciplinary field of research about judgment and decision making deals a) with the development of ideal rules for judgment and decision making (normative perspective), b) with the description and prediction of the decisions and judgments people make just as biases and errors that occur (descriptive perspective) and c) with the improvement of decision making behavior by suitable measures of support for the decision making (prescriptive models). Judgment is the process of constructing evaluations about the world. Examples for consumers and law are: Taken the available test report, how good is the manufacturing quality of the new VW Golf? Did O.J. Simpson in fact kill his wife? Decision making describes the selection of one or multiple options under consideration of individual preferences (e.g. risk preference: More or less readiness to take a risk) and under consideration of evaluations about the world (see judgments). Examples for decision making with reference to the judgments described above are: Would you like to buy a VW Golf for 20,000 Euros? Should O.J. Simpson get convicted?