People often follow intuitive principles of decision making, ranging from group loyalty to the belief that nature is benign. But instead of using these principles as rules of thumb, we often treat them as absolutes and ignore the consequences of following them blindly.
In Judgment Misguided, Jonathan Baron explores our well-meant and deeply felt personal intuitions about what is right and wrong, and how they affect the public domain. Baron argues that when these intuitions are valued in their own right, rather than as a means to another end, they often prevent us from achieving...

Why do our government leaders continually make decisions and craft policies that everybody knows are foolish? Because they, like the rest of us, remain trapped in foolish and unproductive habits of thinking. "You Can't Enlarge the Pie" analyzes the unspoken assumptions that lead to bad policy, wasted resources, and lost lives, and shows exactly why they're wrong. With fascinating case studies and clear, compelling analysis, it dissects six psychological barriers to ineffective government:1. Do no harm. 2. Their gain is our loss.3. Competition is always good. 4. Support our group. 5. Live for...

What is intelligence? Can it be increased by teaching? If so, how, and what difference would an increase make? Before we can answer these questions, we need to clarify them. Jonathan Baron argues that when we do so we find that intelligence has much to do with rational thinking, and that the skills involved in rational thinking are in fact teachable, at least to some extent. Rationality and Intelligence develops and justifies a prescriptive theory of rational thinking in terms of utility theory and the theory of rational life plans. The prescriptive theory, buttressed by other assumptions,...

Public controversies - such as those about the distribution of goods between rich and poor, trade and population policies, allocation of medical resources, and the tradeoff between environment al protection and economic efficiency - often hinge on fundamental views about how we ought to make decisions tImt affect each other, that is, what principles we ought to follow. Efforts to find an acceptable public philosophy, a set of such principles on which people might agree, have foundered because of dis agreement among philosophers and others who are concerned with such issues. One view, which I...

Justice, equity, and fairness are central concerns of everyday life. We frequently assess the fairness of individual acts, social programs, and institutional policies. This book explores how distributions of costs and benefits determine our intuitions about fairness. Some chapters examine the extent to which individual behavior deviates from normative theories of justice. This comparison requires an answer to the question of how fair distributions of resources or burdens should be made. Competing theories, such as utilitarianism and economic efficiency, are discussed. Other chapters...

What makes some decisions easy and others difficult? Current research in judgment and decision making indicates that conflict plays a decisive role in decision making processes. The essays in this book address questions about the causes of conflict and its effects on decision making and emotions, particularly (but not only) the emotion of regret. Several chapters address the role of attribute tradeoffs, such as that between money and risk, in the measurement of values for policy purposes. The chapters provide overviews of several current research programs and present new data.

This book describes a variety of programs -- firmly based in psychological theory and modern decision analysis -- that are suitable for teaching adolescents how to improve both their own decision making skills and their understanding of the decision making of others. Providing practical advice as well as theoretical analysis, this volume addresses general questions such as the nature and rationale of the enterprise, its implementation, and its evaluation. Relevant to several current adolescent problems including drug abuse, this is an excellent source, either as research, new curriculum, or...