Book Review

STRAIGHT CHOICES: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECISION MAKING. By Benjamin R. Newell, David A. Lagnado, &David R. Shanks. New York: Psychology Press, 2007.

Reviewed by Guillermo Campitelli, School of Accounting, Finance & Economics, Edith Cowan University, 270 Joondalup Drive, Joondalup,WA 6027, Australia.

Straight Choices is an excellent book on psychology ofdecision making. It offers an innovative approach on how tounderstand judgments and decisions. For the authors, theinvestigation of the processes that occur before making adecision or a judgment is essential to determine how wellpeople make decisions or judgments. A choice is part of acycle of processes that includes the following: (i) discoveringcues that would help in making a choice; (ii) acquiring cueinformation; (iii) combining this information to make a finalchoice; and (iv) incorporating information provided by theenvironment, relative to that choice (i.e. feedback). Thenumber of times we are exposed to decision‐makingsituations of a similar type and the quality of feedback wereceive from the environment are what explain individualdifferences in preferences and in accuracy of judgments.

Guided by this thesis, the authors, besides comprehensive-ly reviewing the traditional literature on judgmental biases,the violations of normative models of choice, and the use ofheuristics, also present numerous studies (a good number oftheir own) in which changes in judgments and decisions occuras a function of learning. Particularly, the authors presentresearch in multiple‐cue probability learning. The beauty ofthis paradigm is that it affords the possibility to investigatedifferent types of judgments and decisions. In differentmultiple‐cue probability learning experiments, participantshave to do the following: (i) predict the value of a criterion(e.g. annual salary of a person) based on predictive cues(e.g. name of the company inwhich he or she works); (ii) choosean alternative (e.g. a diagnosis for a given patient) based onhow cues (e.g. symptoms) are related to alternatives in previoustrials; and (iii) make a decision (e.g. choosing a company toinvest in) based on predictive cues (e.g. financial reserves of thecompanies). In all these cases, participants are given theopportunity to learn the predictive relationship between cues andalternatives or criteria by making choices and receivingfeedback. The first type of experiments is related to the lensmodel byBrunswik and emphasizes the regression of judgmentsand criteria to cues. The second type is in the tradition ofassociate learning and is mainly interested in how peoplelearn the contingencies of the environment. The third type isan adaptation of the lens model to investigate how peoplesearch through cues. One of the interests of the latter is tofind out whether participants use fast‐and‐frugal heuristics intheir search.

Given the importance given to learning, it is not surprisingthat Straight Choices also shows studies on how experts(i.e. individuals who have been learning in their fields for

many years) make judgments and decisions. I have carried outresearch following the expertise approach by Herbert Simon,and I am a strong advocate for the use of his expertiseapproach in decision making (Campitelli & Gobet, 2010).Hence, I was delighted to find out that scholars of the caliberof Straight Choices’ authors propose a similar approach tothat of Simon’s in a book of psychology of decision making.To highlight the importance of learning in decision making,consider the following situations: Paul is taking his first tennislesson. His coach explains to him how to approach the ball,how to move the arm in a horizontal trajectory, and the timingof the movement. Paul understands everything perfectly andis ready to go. First attempt: Paul approaches the ball, tries tohit it with a bottom–up movement of the arm at the wrongtime, and he misses the ball. This “experiment” could berepeated with thousands of Pauls, and we would obtain asimilar result: misjudgment of the trajectory of the ball andthat of the racket and probably bias (tendency to use abottom–up movement). However, if Paul does not give upand keeps taking tennis lessons, he will be able to hit the ball,correct his bias, and, possibly, decide voluntarily where todirect the ball. The participants in judgment and decision‐making experiments are usually in a situation similar to Paul’sfirst lesson. They are faced with a task in which they do notknow very well what to do. Hence, they do what they areused to do, hoping this would lead them to solve the taskproperly. In other words, they tend to make mistakes, andthese are systematic (i.e. these mistakes are not random errors,but they are biases). Traditional research in decision makingtends to stop research here. That is, the participants are notgiven opportunities to learn. Straight Choices shows theresearch of the authors and that of other researchers that payattention to learning. It presents evidence that in severalcircumstances, if given opportunities to learn (sometimes1800 trials), participants are able to avoid typical biases(e.g. base‐rate neglect) observed in one‐shot decisions.

There is a difference between Paul’s first tennis lesson andthe decision‐making tasks. If we asked Paul how confidenthe is that he hit the ball, he would say 0%. On the otherhand, when participants in calibration studies make confidentjudgments on the accuracy of their choices, they tend to beoverconfident. The difference is that Paul has access to clearfeedback (he can see and feel that his racket did not hit theball), whereas the participants in calibration studies do nothave access to feedback. Feedback is an essential aspect ofStraight Choices’ approach. In chapter 4, the authors discusswhether outcome feedback is good enough to improve the

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Behavioral Decision MakingJ. Behav. Dec. Making, 25: 210–211 (2012)

accuracy of judgments. We are informed that in judgmenttasks in which the participants have to predict a value of acriterion based on cues, the outcome feedback is goodenoughwhen there are only two or three cues that are correlatedto the criterion. In tasks with more cues, a more detailedfeedback is necessary to improve the accuracy of judgments.

After a brief introduction to concepts and a historicalcontext (chapters 1 and 2), the authors tackle the issue ofjudgments (chapters 3–7), decisions (chapters 8–12), contextof choice (chapters 13 and 14), and practical applications ofdecision‐making research (chapter 15). My favorite chaptersare 3, 4, 7, 11, and 12 because in these chapters the authorspresent their original approach. However, the emphasis onlearning and cognitive processes permeates the whole book.Hence, by reading the book, I gathered new insights in themore well‐known judgment and decision‐making topics.Another important feature of Straight Choices is that itmakes important novel claims. For example, the authorspropose not only that learning provides a database by whichwe can make our judgments but also that the mechanisms thatoperate during learning are active in the judgment process. Inchapter 7, the authors explain that, when people are exposedto cues and outcomes, they learn the contingencies betweencues and outcomes (i.e. probability of an outcome when a cueis present minus probability of an outcome when this cue isabsent). This means that outcome‐cue contingency is not thesame as probability of an outcome given a cue. Many of thejudgment errors people make are because they makeprobability judgments based on contingencies instead ofprobabilities. To explain how the participants approximate tooptimal choice after extended practice, the authors improvethe famous Rescorla & Wagner’s (1972) model of weights ofinternal associations between cues and outcomes by adding afunction that transforms association weights into behavior(see chapter 12). In chapter 4, the authors present two types ofstrategies: compensatory and noncompensatory. The formerconsiders the values of alternatives in a number of cues anduses the importance of each cue to weigh these values. Thenoncompensatory strategies use the first cue that discriminatesbetween alternatives and ignore the other cues. The authorspresent research (some of their own) that shows that both typesof strategies are used. They propose that the evidence‐

accumulation model by Lee and Cummins (2004) capturesindividual variability in the use of search strategies. Thismodel states that all the participants use an evidence‐accumulation strategy but with different thresholds on whatthey consider enough evidence to stop searching.

Readers aiming to improve their choices could find usefultools in chapter 15. The authors show a number of techniquesor procedures that have some empirical evidence to supportthem or that were developed based on empirical evidence.Even though readers may be disappointed that there are not asmany techniques as in other books, the author’s choice oflimiting themselves to sound techniques is straight: relying ontechniques with no empirical support or not based on sounddecision‐making principles could lead to negligent decisions.Decision‐making researchers (including myself) should makemore efforts aiming at generating and testing decision‐makingtools. I believe, the emphasis the authors put in learning andfeedback is in the correct direction to achieve this goal.

Altogether, the authors made an impressive work onintegrating different paradigms (e.g. associative learning, lensmodel, probability judgments) to offer a novel view on howpeople make choices. Their emphasis on learning, cognitiveprocesses, and feedback is a very important contribution tothe field.

REFERENCES

Campitelli, G., & Gobet, F. (December 2010). Herbert Simon’sdecision‐making approach: Investigation of cognitive processesin experts. Review of General Psychology, 14(4), 354–364.

Lee, M. D., & Cummins, T. D. R. (2004). Evidence accumulation indecision making: Unifying “take the best” and “rational models”.Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 343–352.

Rescorla, R. A., & Wagner, A. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovianconditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement andnonreinforcement. InA.H.Black,&W.F. Prokasy (Eds.),Classicalconditioning II: Current theory and research (pp. 64–99). NewYork: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts.

Published online in Wiley Online Library(wileyonlinelibrary.com)DOI:10.1002/bdm.732

211G. Campitelli

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25: 210–211 (2012)

DOI: 10.1002/bdm