This course will provide knowledge of different approaches in decision making research and of findings about psychological judgment and decision making processes, and show how to translate this knowledge to the judgment and decision processes of professional mental health clinicians. More specifically, in this course students learn to:
- Describe the three theoretical approaches in psychological decision making (i.e. the descriptive, normative, and prescriptive approach)(2);
- Understand research into the psychological processes of judging and deciding, in clinical and non clinical situations (2,4);
- Interpret results of research into the psychological processes of judging and deciding, in clinical and non clinical situations (2,4);
- Recognise human errors and biases and their consequences in judging and deciding, in clinical and non clinical situations (4);
- Acknowledge and interpret difficulties and pitfalls that people face when they make decisions in daily life, or, as mental health clinicians, about the diagnosis and treatment of their clients (4).
|
 |
|
|
Judgments and decisions underlie our actions in daily life and in clinical practice. Situations in which we make judgments and decisions are often complex and the available information is often uncertain. In this course, we explain how judging and decision making are studied, we discuss research findings about these mental activities and how we can explain these findings, using Kim's (2018) handbook.
Three types of models are introduced; descriptive models that reflect how people normally reason and decide, normative models that look at reasoning and decision making from rational standards, and prescriptive models that clarify how to approximate those standards. Insights from general psychological decision research about difficulties and common biases will be presented and complemented with findings from clinical decision research.
|
|