Behavioral Decision Making at 50: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges

Many people consider thatWard Edwards’ 1954 review paper marks the beginning of behavioral decision making or the study of how people make decisions. Fifty years after Edwards’ paper, it is illuminating to reflect on the progress of the field over the last five decades and to ask what the next fifty years might have in store. To do this, I identify ten major ideas or findings that have emerged to date. These are: (1) that judgment can be modeled; (2) bounded rationality; (3) to understand decision making, understanding tasks is more important than understanding people; (4) levels of aspiration or reference points and loss aversion; (5) heuristic rules; (6) adding and the importance of simple models; (7) the search for confirmation; (8) the evasive nature of risk perception; (9) the construction of preference; and (10) the roles of emotions, affect, and intuition. I further identify major challenges currently facing the field. These include linking knowledge to the growing body of work in neuroscience, developing methodologies that can generalize experimental results, having more impact on helping people make decisions, and extending collaboration with other disciplines in the social sciences.