Aided and unaided decision making: Improving intuitive judgement

Abstract

Intuitive judgement forms the basis of decision making both by experts, in professional settings, and by people in everyday life. Psychologists have studied the rationality of intuitive judgements. In this paper three approaches to decision making will be discussed: unqualified rationalism, qualified rationalism and irrationalism. The first approach holds that man is essentially rational, the second that serious cognitive biases exist, and the third that thinking is strongly influenced by non-cognitive sources of distortion, i.e. emotions and motives. Evidence on judgement is reviewed and found to support the last two approaches. Various ways of improving judgements, as suggested by the three basic viewpoints, are then presented.