Decision Making and Action

Jean-Charles Pomerol is a specialist of Decision Support Systems, and former project leader for information technology in the Engineering Sciences Department at the CNRS. He was formerly in charge of the Artificial Intelligence laboratory at UPMC, Paris, France, as well as being the President of UPMC between 2006 and 2011. In this book, the author shares all this accumulated experience with the reader.

• Introduction xiChapter 1 What is a Decision, or What Does Decision Theory Have to Teach Us? 11.1 Actions and events 11.2 Probabilities 51.3 Expected utility 71.4 Subjective probabilities and rationality of the decision 121.5 Caveats and recommendations 14Chapter 2 Scenarios and Conditional Probabilities 172.1 Scenarios 172.2 Compound probabilities 212.3 Scenarios and conditional probabilities 242.4 Decision tree 282.5 Scenarios, information and pragmatics 322.6 Pursuance of the scenarios and the "just one more push" 352.7 Conditional probabilities and accidents 392.8 Caveats and recommendations 41Chapter 3 The Process of Decision-Making and its Rationality, or What Does Artificial Intelligence Have to Teach Us? 433.1 A decision as a problem 433.2 Decision table 453.3 The general process of decision-making 463.4 Case-based reasoning 483.5 The Olympian point-of-view, and H Simon’s view 513.6 Information 543.7 Limited rationality 573.8 Heuristics 603.9 Cognitive limitation 613.10 Feedback on rationality in decisions 623.11 Caveats and recommendations 64Chapter 4 Intuition, Emotion, Recognition and Reasoning or, What Does the Neurobiology of Decision-Making Have to Teach Us? 674.1 Introduction 684.2 Animal "decision" 694.3 Recognition-primed decision 704.4 The brain and emotion 734.5 Short-term, long-term 784.6 The Bayesian brain 834.7 Caveats and recommendations 85Chapter 5 Decision-Making in the Presence of Conflicting Criteria, or What Does a Multicriterion Decision Aid Have to Teach Us? 875.1 Preference structures 885.2 Multicriterion decision aid 915.3 Weighted sum aggregation 935.4 Other aggregation methods 1005.5 Aggregation of votes 1035.6 Social choice and collective decision 1055.7 Individual reactions to multicriterion decision-making 1095.8 Constraints and multicriterion decision-making in organizations 1105.9 Caveats and recommendations 112Chapter 6 The Decision-Maker’s Psychology, or What Does Psychology Have to Teach Us? 1156.1 Introduction 1166.2 The decision-maker’s rationality and utility function 1176.3 Constructing the utility function 1196.4 Utility function in the risk 1206.5 Loss aversion and the endowment effect 1256.6 Biases related to the probabilities 1266.7 Self-confidence and the illusion of control 1346.8 Biases linked to memory 1366.9 Frame effect 1406.10 Level of reference and anchoring 1446.11 Rationalization and reinforcement 1546.12 System 1 or System 2? 1566.13 Biases or heuristics? 1596.14 Caveats and recommendations 162Chapter 7 Context of the Decision: Intention, Commitment, Trust, Fairness, Authority and Freedom 1677.1 Intention and commitment 1687.2 Trust and reciprocity 1717.3 Fairness 1777.4 Freedom and responsibility 1807.5 Authority 1827.6 "Leadership" in organizations 1867.7 Rationality between logic and probabilities 1897.8 Rationality and "good reasons" 1927.9 Caveats and recommendations 197Chapter 8 Action: Giving the Impetus or Managing 2018.1 Deciding and acting 2028.2 Quick or slow decision-makers 2038.3 Consensual or imperative decision-makers 2088.4 To act or to manage? That is the question 2128.5 Reflect long, project long term: strategic planning and decision-making in organizations 2178.6 Feedback and learning 2218.7 Conclusion 2268.8 Caveats and recommendations 226Chapter 9 Vade Mecum of the Acting Decision-Maker 2299.1 That which depends on you, and that which does not 2299.2 That which depends on you: information, imagination and the process of decision-making 2309.3 That which depends only on you: learning and planning 2329.4 That which depends on nature: the pitfalls of probabilities 2349.5 That which depends on our human nature: the pitfalls of the human brain 2369.6 That which depends on other people: conflicts and manipulation 2399.7 What the result depends on: your style and your action 2419.8 And finally... 243Bibliography 245Index of Names 263General Index 269