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CCS News
Spring 2010 course announcement
Information and Decision Sciences 8721: Behavioural Decision Theory (2 credits)*
Spring-B, 2010 (March 22-May 7, 2010)
94046
Instructor: Shawn P. Curley, Professor
Department of Information & Decision Sciences
curley@umn.edu
Class Times: Mon Wed 3:45 - 5:25 pm
Room: 1-142 csom
Course Description:
How do we go about making choices and the judgments on which they are based? What are some of the biases to which we are prone in making choices and judgments, and how do they arise? Can we improve upon our decision practices? Questions like these motivate and frame research in behavioral decision making.
A large portion of the covered research can be conceptualized as arising from origins in normative decision theory. Normative decision theory represents decision making in terms of preferences over consequences and beliefs about possible events. In order to put this theory into practice, several descriptive components must come from the decision makers: their preferences, their judgments concerning the possible contingencies that might arise, and the variables/factors/actions that comprise the decision structure--the relevant elements for making the decision. Behavioral decision theory is interested in these descriptive components, and the cognitive processes by which they arise and affect choice.
The course is a graduate level treatment of topics in decision theory from a behavioral perspective. The course will be primarily in seminar format. We will look at both traditional and current research in the field in an attempt to understand and integrate some of the major models and methodologies employed in the field of behavioral decision theory. The course covers models and issues of preference, judgment, and uncertainty. We will begin by going through the following text:
Yates JF. (1990). /Judgment and decision making/. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Beginning with Week 3 of the course, we will use our class time to discuss original journal articles on selected topics. As an example, you can view the course schedule from the last time the course was taught (Spring-A, 2008) linked from my home page: http://umn.edu/home/curley.
Please contact the instructor with any questions about the course.