Special+Area+-+The+Science+of+Decision-Making

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The Science of Decision-Making
Prepare yourself to explore the basics of behavioral economics: why do people make the choices that they do?

Classical economists assumed all humans were rational actors. Are we? Do we respond rationally to risk? How does the placement of an item on a shelf affect whether we purchase it? Are we happier with more choices, or fewer?

Are there decisions we make without thinking? Is it ethical for the government to nudge people toward what it believes to be desirable behaviors?

We'll also push beyond individual choice to explore topics such as decision-making in organizations, the increase in technologies intended to influence our choices, and the nature and limits of leadership.

 > ====Heads or Tails: Individual Decision-Making==== > ====All Together Now: Group Decision-Making==== > ====Introducing Game Theory==== > ====Under the Influence: Persuasion and Decision-Making==== > ====Philosophical Responses to Decision-Making==== > ====Additional Terms to Learn (Examples)==== > ====Game Theory Scenarios to Explore==== > ====Current Trends in the Study of Decision-Making (Examples)==== = = =Resources:= [|Anonymous Social media] =TED Talk: Alex Wissner-Gross= Is there an equation for intelligence? Yes. It’s F = T ∇ Sτ. In a fascinating and informative talk, physicist and computer scientist Alex Wissner-Gross explains what in the world that means. (Filmed at TEDxBeaconStreet.)
 * 1) ====Questions to Discuss====
 * How do //you// make decisions?
 * How do you think other people make decisions?
 * How do groups make decisions?
 * What does economics tell us about decision-making?
 * What does psychology tell us about decision-making?
 * Are people’s decisions determined by biology?
 * How do we define good and bad decisions?
 * Why do smart people make mistakes?
 * How can decisions be influenced?
 * Do different groups of people (men and women, or teenagers and adults, etc.) make decisions differently?
 * When should people not be held responsible for the consequences of their decisions?
 * 1)
 * Insights from Economics
 * Insights from Psychology
 * Insights from Neuroscience
 * Responses to Risk and Ambiguity
 * 1)
 * Advantages and Disadvantages of Collaboration
 * Explaining the Tragedy of the Commons
 * Majority Rules: the Promise and Peril of Democracy
 * Deciding for Someone Else: Surrogate Decision-Making
 * The Impact of New Technologies
 * 1)
 * Game theory versus decision theory
 * The Keynesian Beauty Contest
 * Understanding Nash Equilibrium
 * 1)
 * Persuasion by People
 * Persuasion by Technology
 * Structural Persuasion (see “Nudge”)
 * Mass Persuasion
 * 1)
 * Consequentialism: Utilitarianism and the Common Good
 * Deontology: the Categorical Imperative and the Difference Principle
 * Virtue and fairness: Aristotle’s Golden Mean and the Golden Rule
 * 1)
 * Decision Trees | Utility | Knowns and Unknowns |
 * Anchoring | Framing | Indifference Curve | Sunk Cost |
 * Marginal Cost | Revealed Preference | Opportunity Cost |
 * Risk Aversion | Ambiguity Aversion | Evolutionary Psychology
 * Shirking | Groupthink | Precautionary Principle | Rationality
 * 1)
 * The Prisoner’s Dilemma | Centipede Game | Rendezvous Problem
 * Traveler’s Dilemma | Two-Thirds of a Number | Deal or No Deal?
 * 1)
 * “Big Data” | “Moneyball” | “Nudge” | “Blink | “Thinking Fast and Slow”

@http://faculty.wwu.edu/gmyers/esssa/Hardin.html Article - Describes how Hardin formulates the population problem, and evaluate his assumptions and his solutions in light of other evidence from the course.

@http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Tragedy_of_the_commons.html Article - The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen. This dilemma was first described in an influential article titled "The Tragedy of the Commons," written by [|Garrett Hardin] and first published in the journal [|Science] in 1968. @http://www.net4dem.org/cyrev/archive/issue1/articles/Promise/PROMISE.PDF Article - The Promise and Peril of the Third Wave: Socialism and Democracy for the 21st Century

@http://www.icnl.org/research/journal/vol7iss2/special_1.htm this joins nicely with " some countries will work better with a dictator that looks after his people, that shares wealth and tries to improve his nation. This might only works if you have a small population, and you are not that greedy. The Promise and Peril of Democracy (Full Text of Speech) By Jimmy Carter

@http://www.democracyweb.org/majority/principles.php Article - Majority Rule/Minority Rights: Essential Principles The titles will give you a real insight of what the paper is about. So interesting for debates

@http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~cp28/surdec.htm Surrogate decision-making - deciding for someone else incapacitated for any reason, illness or mental problems

@http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/66/135 Article - Making Decisions for Other People: The Problem of Judging Acceptable Levels of Risk

@http://www.strategy-business.com/article/re00135?gko=f4066 Article - How Information and Communication Technologies Affect Decision Making

@http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/ndu/strat-ldr-dm/pt1ch3.html Article - INFORMATION AGE AND STRATEGIC DECISION MAKING

As the future is uncertain, the only thing relatively clear is that much of what we will experience in the future will be different from the past. We must understand it is not information or even technology that will produce this unprecedented change, but the impact of technology on all aspects of human life; not computers or even bits and bytes, but the ability to apply and integrate rapid technological change. The focus must not be on the World Wide Web, but instead on how the Web influences values, beliefs, social and economic structures, politics, our view of the world and the way we think and behave.Futurist John L. Peterson forewarns that, "We are living in a period of time that will produce more change for humanity than any previous era in history." Peterson and many others believe that wholesale change is and will continue to take place in every segment of the world and that the pace of that change will continue at an unprecedented rate, gaining momentum with time. If this futurist is correct, the coming decades will have staggering implications for the environment and present both hazard and opportunity for the strategic leader. In fact, Moore's law suggests that memory capacity will continue to double every 18 months. If senior leaders want to take advantage of this fast paced, changing world and avoid the pitfalls associated with it, Peterson believes they must understand at least three things. Will leaders focus on shaping a fast changing environment to their organization or will they focus on creating an adaptive organization that will adjust to meet the fast changing environment? Crucial question: "Is the leader of the future going to control technology or is the technology going to control the leader"? @http://www.lockergnome.com/decisions/2011/12/19/game-theory-vs-decision-theory/ Article - Game Theory Vs. Decision Theory In pure decision theory, a rational person (I know that might be an oxymoron) is faced with a physical situation that might have many variables, some of which can be random. But there is an implicit assumption that the Universe is not cheating, trying to hinder, or helping. It just is. We who live in the real world might feel this is a bad assumption since we know that things are going against us on purpose. Murphy’s Law was coined to express that feeling. The lesser known “first law of perversity of small inanimate objects” is another attempt to catch the feeling that it is “them” against “us” where “them” includes anything that stands in our way of doing something we really want to do. In truth, we know that “they” do not really exist just to bother us, and the Universe continues to exist without caring too much about what we want to do. When attempting to make the best decision about a physical situation, decision theory was developed to help bias the outcome to the desired one. Note that due to the presence of random variables, the computed best decision in only a probable best decision. Betting on a lottery is not a good financial decision on the average, but if you win the mega-dollars drawing, then for you it was a good decision. Game theory, on the other hand, explicitly assumes other rational beings are involved in what you are doing — or trying to do. They might be helping; they might be hindering; or they might ignore you. Either way, the world defined by your problem includes other rational people who must be dealt with intelligently to get the job done.There is a murky border where the person trying to make the best decision is working in a situation with insane (or, at least, not //always// rational) adversaries. We can simplify what follows by ignoring that possibility or by considering it to be a subset of pure decision theory. That is a cheat, but in one post, we cannot consider all cases. @http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgN5aqvhSmo Keynesian beauty contest theory - beauty contest and markets (8 min)
 * Have a broad understanding of what this new environment is all about.
 * Understand the major forces that are driving this monumental change.
 * Understand how they can think and see the world differently than they have before.
 * What will be the new demands and pressures placed on senior leaders of the future?
 * How can leaders hope to cope with this "permanent white water" environment?
 * How can leaders absorb and use the vast amounts of information needed for the complex, fast moving, decision making environment?
 * Can leaders be found that already have the requisite cognitive skills required to process massive amounts of information quickly and efficiently for competent decision making in the strategic environment?

@http://www.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/ljdm/Studentconference/beauty.pdfArticle - Keynes remarked that the stock market is like a beauty contest. He had in mind contests that were popular in England at the time, where a newspaper would print 100 photographs, and people would write in and say which six faces they liked most. Everyone who picked the most popular face was automatically entered in a raffle, where they could win a prize. Keynes wrote, “It is not a case of choosing those [faces] which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. And there are some, I believe, who practise the fourth, fifth and higher degrees. @http://www.marietta.edu/~delemeeg/expernom/nagel.htm Article - A Keynesian Beauty Contest in the Classroom

@http://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Ashley/6%20References%20for%20KBC.pdf Article - References for Keynesian Beauty Contest

@http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne/igt/nash.pdf Draft chapter from An introduction to game theory by Martin J. Osborne - model of interacting decision makers

@http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brkhuetnJmM Explanation of Game Theory & the Nash Equilibrium Point; AP Microeconomics; Economics (4min)

@https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/nash-equilibrium-tutorial Game theory and Nash equilibrium - very interesting site

@http://blog.bufferapp.com/the-science-of-persuasion The Science of Persuasion: How To Get People to Agree with What You Say

@http://psychology.about.com/od/socialinfluence/f/what-is-persuasion.htm What Is Persuasion?

@http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/arossett/pie/Interventions/captology_1.htm Captology: The Study of Computers As Persuasive Technology

@http://captology.stanford.edu/ Stanford persuasive tech lab He defines persuasion as, "an attempt to shape, reinforce, or change behaviors, feelings, or thoughts about an issue, object, or action." (Fogg, no date, 1) Captology includes two varieties of persuasion: "macrosuasion" and "microsuasion". Macrosuasion refers to products that are used exclusively for persuasion. Microsuasion refers to products that include components meant to persuade. (Cheng, 2003)

According to Dr. Fogg, "One key point implicit in my definition is that true persuasion must be the result of an attempt to change attitudes or behaviors; in other words, persuasion requires intentionality." (Fogg, no date) From this we can deduce that all use of computers is not Captology. There are a number of methods to use a computer to instruct or inform that do not also include an attempt to persuade the intended audience. There are also times when persuasion occurs but without any intent on the part of the developer. "A computer qualifies as a persuasive technology only when those who create, distribute, or adopt the technology do so with an intent to affect human attitudes or behaviors." (Fogg, no date) In other words computers require human interaction with the intent to persuade to be considered persuasive technology. "Most software development is about functionality and usability, and only incidentally about modifying the user." (Grosso, 2003) Since the intent to persuade is a key component of captology, software programs, web sites, or other computer technology developed without such intent do not qualify as captology.

@http://www.bartlett.psychol.cam.ac.uk/Prop%20and%20mass%20persuasion.html Propaganda and the Techniques of Mass Persuasion '... the propagandists' assumption of superiority, both directly and indirectly, increased enormously with the rise of the totalitarian states .. ."

There Is a sense in which propaganda can be defined as' any deliberate and organised attempt to get people to accept with belief opinions that are put forward by the propagandists, and to act in accordance with these opinions. Perhaps that was all that was in the mind of Pope Gregory XV when, in 1622, he established the Congregatio de propaganda fide, the committee of Cardinals who were to direct the development of foreign missions. However, that committee was outstandingly authoritarian, and any power it had was due principally to its established and accepted prestige within the contemporary society.

In fact, whether in the ancient world—for there are instances readily to be found at every stage of human Social development—or in modern times, the great distinguishing mark of propaganda has been that it is a relation of superiors to inferiors—of those who propose to those who accept. As everyone knows, the propagandists' assumption of superiority, both directly and indirectly, increased enormously with the rise of the totalitarian States in modern society and particularly just before and during the Second World War.

Normal Means

In any widespread appeal propaganda uses the normal means of human intercommunication, that is words, numbers and pictures. With these two considerations in mind we may see that to-day by far the most interesting problems about propaganda are: has its character changed recently, and if so, how and why?

Throughout its whole history the effective range of propaganda has depended to a great degree upon scientific and technological advances; upon the discovery of printing and the long story of the many improvements which have made possible the daily newspaper and all forms of printed report covering current views and events; upon the development of colour printing and rapid forms of photographic reproduction and display; most of all, perhaps, upon the discoveries which led to popular broadcasting and television and, especially in the last few years, upon the widespread availability of transistor receiving sets and upon correspondingly great improvements in the means of transmission. It is often pointed out that these last two have led to a vast increase in the number of people accessible to the propagandist. More important, but less often considered, is the fact that they have also led to a very notable increase in the number of sources of propaganda.

In the last six years, from 1955-61, there has been an increase in wireless receiving sets regularly operating in Western Furope of 34 per cent.; in the U.S.S.R. and satellites of 69 per cent.; In Latin America of 96 per cent.; in the West Indies of 209 per cent.; in Asia, outside of Japan, Communist China and India, of 275 per cent.; in Communist China of 350 per cent, and in Africa, outside of South Africa, of 420 per cent. These figures concern increase of sets alone. The increase of listeners must be much greater, since a set may have many listeners, especially in what arc usually called "underdeveloped areas." Recently, also, there has been a large increase both in the number and in the power of transmitters for broadcasting and television, and this has been marked all over the world, so that most of the social groups which have achieved, or are vigorously seeking to achieve, political independence now regularly attempt propaganda to their own and to outside communities.

@http://hum.sagepub.com/content/2/3/253.abstract Some Principles of Mass Persuasion During the recent war social psychologists were called upon to conduct research on many problems of importance to the war effort. Many of the data obtained in these research projects had significance and interest only in the immediate situation for which they were collected. Some findings, however, contribute information to basic or recurring problems of social psychology. In order to illuminate some of the basic processes involved in the induction of mass behavior, this paper draws upon the extensive program of wartime research conducted for the War Finance Division of the United States Treasury Department by the Division of Program Surveys of the Department of Agriculture. The immediate aims of the research program were to help guide policy decisions in the development of a program of inflation control through the sale of Saving Bonds.

@http://www.pgrim.org/philosophersannual/pa28articles/jacobson.pdf Utilitarianism without Consequentialism: The Case of John Stuart Mill

@http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/introduction/consequentialism_1.shtml Consequentialism says that right or wrong depend on the consequences of an act, and that the more good consequences are produced, the better the act.

Consequentialism

Consequentialism is based on two principles:


 * Whether an act is right or wrong depends only on the results of that act
 * The more good consequences an act produces, the better or more right that act

It gives us this guidance when faced with a moral dilemma:


 * A person should choose the action that maximises good consequences

And it gives this general guidance on how to live:


 * People should live so as to maximise good consequences

Different forms of consequentialism differ over what the good thing is that should be maximised.


 * Utilitarianism states that people should maximise human welfare or well-being (which they used to call 'utility' - hence the name).
 * Hedonism states that people should maximise human pleasure.
 * Other forms of consequentialism take a more subtle approach; for example stating that people should maximise the satisfaction of their fully informed and rational preferences.

In practice people don't assess the ethical consequences of every single act (that's called 'act consequentialism') because they don't have the time.

Instead they use ethical rules that are derived from considering the general consequences of particular types of acts. That is called 'rule consequentialism'.

@http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.ae/2010/11/on-utilitarianism-and-consequentialism.html

On Utilitarianism and Consequentialism

@http://www.articlegarden.com/Article/Kant-s-Deontology-and-Categorical-Imperative/47642 Ethical theories: this one is very different. It is known as Deontology and the great champion of Deontology was a Prussian named Immanuel Kant. Kant has gone down in history as one of the greatest thinkers of all time but it was his work in ethics that was his greatest contribution. Deontological theories are theories of morality that state that one should act out of duty. This differs from Utilitarianism in that the ends do not need to justify the means. According to those that subscribe to Deontology the motivation behind any particular action is what determines its morality, not the consequences of the action as in Utilitarianism. This has one major advantage over Utilitarianism. It is possible now to be confident that the act is a morally right one before it is committed. You will recall that under Act Utilitarianism one had to wait to see the consequences of an action before the action could be judged to be right or wrong. It also just seems to make sense. If you meant well by an action and had no reason to suspect it would cause pain why should you be blamed when it does? The phrase “it’s the thought that counts” is supposing to a Deontological ethic. The down side of this is that we might have to admit that some of histories worst crimes were in a sense right because the perpetrators were true believers in what they were doing, however perverse their thinking might have been. The Holocaust comes to mind. The writings left by Himmler seem to indicate that he truly believed it was his duty to eliminate the Jews. Kant recognized this problem and made an attempt to solve it by what came to be known as the Categorical Imperative. Though Kant proposed several different forms for the Categorical Imperative it is his first one that seems to sum it up best to me. “Act only According to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” What does that mean? To understand the Categorical Imperative you must understand the word “maxim.”

Webster’s 1828 gives us this definition, “Maxim, n. An established principle or proposition; a principle generally received or admitted as true.”

So maxim is simply another word for principle. With that in mind reread the Categorical Imperative one more time and it should make more sense. Based on the Categorical Imperative when judging the morality of an action one has to decide what principle the action is based on. Then you must decide if that maxim could be applied on a universal scale. If it could then the action is deemed to be good, if it cannot the action is deemed to be morally bad. I’ll give you an example to better illustrate this point. Suppose you want to lie to someone to keep from offending him or her. Your motives are good, so you pass the first test in Deontology. Now you apply the Categorical Imperative, could the lying (the maxim) be applied universally? If all people were habitual liars then would lying work? No, of course not, because lies depend on deception. People would not be deceived if they were expecting to be lied to. So according to Kant and his Categorical Imperative lying is morally wrong.

Some of you may have picked up on the shortcoming of the Categorical Imperative in the above illustration. The person who is likely to be committing the action in question picks the maxim. If you get very specific with the maxim then you can almost always arrive at a positive answer. If you change the maxim from “all people should lie all the time” to “all people in my exact circumstance should lie” the entire equation is changed. It is for this reason that the Categorical Imperative is meant to be applied as broadly as possible, but the ultimate judgement on how broad to go is still left to the individual.

@http://www.thisisphilosophy.com/PowerPoints/Lecture%2010%20virtue%20ethics.pdf Power Pont - Ethics

@https://www.google.ae/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CDgQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sjsu.edu%2Fpeople%2Frita.manning%2Fcourses%2Fc3%2Fs1%2F186%2520Virtue%2520Aristotle%2520and%2520Confucius.ppt&ei=15vYUq4uiYaFB8XQgYgM&usg=AFQjCNF2pR6sNVT9eOo9y3bK-03xwdgSPg&bvm=bv.59568121,d.ZG4

=Further Resources Added 25 January:= Reading the first couple of paragraphs will give you an insight of the problem. Some extracts have been added as well.

http://www.decision-making-confidence.com/fallacy-decision-making.html @http://www.decision-making-confidence.com/mind-control.html http://www.decision-making-confidence.com/media-influence-our-decisions.html @http://www.decision-making-confidence.com/gender-roles-in-decision-making.html http://www.princeton.edu/~blinder/papers/00NBER7909.pdf @http://www.princeton.edu/~blinder/papers/00NBER7909.pdf Conclusions Perhaps the best way to illustrate the striking similarly in findings from these two very different experiments is to rack them up, side by side, as we do in Table 3: Table 3 Urn experiment Monetary Policy Experiment 1. Groups no slower Groups no slower 2. Groups better by 3.7% Groups better by 3.5% 3. Majority rule approx. the same as unanimity Majority rule approx. the same as unanimity 4. Early learning improves scores Early learning does not improve scores 5. Women decide faster Women decide faster 6. Men outperform women as individuals Men do not outperform women as individuals 7. Male majorities do not outperform female majorities Male majorities do not outperform female majorities 47 8. Subsequent group scores higher if unanimity comes first Subsequent group scores not higher if unanimity comes first 9. Simple models of group behavior fit poorly Simple models of group behavior fit poorly 10. No significant individual effects Significant individual effects

While there are some minor differences (noted above) between the results of the urn experiment and those of the monetary policy experiment, the correspondence is little short of amazing. From the start, our interest centered on the first two findings: these experimental results, what seemingly everyone believes (including the authors, prior to this study) is simply not true: Groups appear to be no slower in reaching decisions than individuals are. answer seems to be yes. And the margin of superiority of group over individual decisions is astonishingly similar in the two experiments--about 3 1/2%. If groups make better decisions and require no more information to do so, then two heads--or, in this case, five--are indeed better than one. Society is, in that case, wise to assign many important decisions to committees. 48
 * Do groups reach decisions more slowly than individuals? According to
 * Do groups make better decisions than individuals? The experimental

REFERENCES Kenneth J. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual Values (

@http://www.directionservice.org/cadre/birkecaptioned.cfm

@https://tadnet.adobeconnect.com/_a984157034/p4ptzkqkep6/?launcher=false&fcsContent=true&pbMode=normal @https://archive.org/details/cognitivesimplif947schw @http://annual.cfainstitute.org/2013/05/21/nobel-prize-winner-thomas-sargent-on-risk-ambiguity-and-investment-decision-making/

Historically, decision makers of all types have used rational expectations as a basic underlying assumption of their economic and financial models. While it has been a useful tool and was a significant leap forward, it is nevertheless an incomplete model. Sargent’s work is pioneering the way in articulating and separating the various components of risk. Some highlights from his lecture: http://srsc.ulb.ac.be/axcwww/papers/pdf/12-Breversetal.pdf
 * Many models inherently assume a universal probability distribution for all actors, Sargent said. While there are strengths to this argument, there are also weaknesses, as people do live in a complex world where actors are not always free to participate in various activities, thus rendering markets incomplete.
 * Citing the Ellsberg paradox, Sargent demonstrated that we live in a heterogeneous world where different people can have different probability distributions. In particular, the Ellsberg paradox demonstrates the inherent conflict of Bayesians.
 * Model ambiguity leads to rapid changes in beliefs. As events unfold, the world gathers more evidence, which collectively pushes people into believing one model may be more appropriate than another. While the data may or may not be conclusive, the shifting of attitudes about which model is right creates tremendous volatility in markets. Consequently, a small amount of ambiguity can substitute for a large amount of risk.
 * Sargent demonstrated how to compare known probability distributions when the choice is ambiguous, using the log-likelihood ratio.
 * The Nobel Prize winner concluded his remarks by illustrating that the robust rule can remove model ambiguity and thereby enable investors to focus on risk

@http://www.decisionsciences.org/dsj/Files/28_1_81-91.pdf

<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS,Fantasy,cursive;">@http://www.carat.ku.edu/CARAT/research/papers-belief-function/22.%20Decision%20under%20Ambiguity.pdf

<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS,Fantasy,cursive;">@http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/decision-making-risk-and-ambiguity.htm

<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS,Fantasy,cursive;"><span style="background-color: #ebe9e1; color: #555555; font-family: Arial,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">The researchers gave subjects a set of gamble-type choices which could be considered certain, risky, or ambiguous. Risky gambles had longer odds, while ambiguous ones didn’t disclose the odds. They measured the brain activity of the subjects while presented with these choices and also determined whether subjects preferred risk or ambiguity by the choices they made. They found that subjects who preferred risk had more activity in their posterior parietal cortex while those who preferred ambiguity lit up part of their lateral prefrontal cortex. - See more at: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/decision-making-risk-and-ambiguity.htm#sthash.CLpWJGUP.dpuf

<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS,Fantasy,cursive;"><span style="background-color: #ebe9e1; color: #555555; font-family: Arial,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10px;">Marketers would do well to understand the difference between risk and ambiguity, and how different people make decisions. While we think of impulse buying as, say, a pack of gum in a supermarket checkout line, many other kinds of buying decision can be impulsive. Although it would be nice to know which customers are risk-averse and which don’t like ambiguity, the best approach may be to reduce BOTH variables to maximize sales – particularly where the time to make a buying decision is brief, and some degree of impulsivity is involved. - See more at: http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/decision-making-risk-and-ambiguity.htm#sthash.CLpWJGUP.dpuf

<span style="font-family: Comic Sans MS,Fantasy,cursive;">@http://members.iinet.net.au/~jtisdell/utas_website/pdf/capon_paper.pdf @http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1030&context=rmi_diss

=Further Resources Added 13 February=