The goal of this book is to consider the importance of intuition and natural logic in decision-making. In everyday life people frequently make judgements and take decisions without explicitly using all the relevant information available from the environment and from their memory. Moreover, even if people are aware of detail and circumstance, they do not necessarily analyse the information at their disposal on a deeper level, nor consider it in an explicit and logical way before making a decision. On the contrary, people often follow the very first response that comes to mind, which is usually an immediate feeling, a spontaneous idea, or a sudden emergence of a sense of "I know what to do" or "this is the best choice". This intuitive, immediate response process typically takes place without any apparent effort; if questioned, people often cannot say why they responded in this fashion. People tend to trust their intuition so frequently simply because they are successful with it; intuition seems to satisfy decision-making needs in many situations. In addition, there is scientific evidence that people's intuition can outperform deliberate thinking processes under specific conditions. Mauro Maldonato and Silvia Dell'Orco address the integration of decision-making across diverse fields -- including economics, medicine and management. They consider the concepts of heuristics and biases through which the psychology of decision making has clarified how strategies, models and "cognitive shortcuts" to which people resort in assessing situations are exposed to frequent and substantive errors. Such analysis leads to a hypothesis of a "regularity of error".

About the Author
Mauro Maldonato is an Italian psychiatrist, professor at Universita degli Studi della Basilicata of Matera. His academic formation includes studies at the La Sapienza University (Rome), Federico II (Naples), London School of Economics, and the Ecole des hautes etudes (Paris). He has been a recurrent visiting professor at the Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP), Pontificia Universidade Catolica (PUC) di Sao Paulo and at Duke University. He is an author and curator of volumes and scientific articles published in numerous languages. He is also the scientific director of the International Research Week. Silvia Dell'Orco, Ph.D., is an Italian psychologist. Her research is conducted in the field of the psychology of reasoning and decision making, cognitive neuroscience and clinical psychology. She is author and co-author of many articles in scientific journals.


Book Information
ISBN 9781845194840
Author Mauro Maldonato
Format Paperback
Page Count 116
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press
Weight(grams) 204g