Suchergebnisse

The development of a dynamic decision theory will be central to the impending rapid expansion of research on human decision processes. Of a taxonomy of six decision problems, five require a dynamic theory in which the decision maker is assumed to make a sequence of decisions, basing decision n + 1 on what he learned from decision n and its consequences. Kesearch in progress on information seeking, intuitive statistics, sequential prediction, and Bayesian information processing is reviewed to illustrate the kind of work needed. The relevance of mathematical developments in dynamic programming and Bayesian statistics to dynamic decision theory is examined. A man-computer system for probabilistic processing of fallible military information is discussed in some detail as an application of these ideas and as a setting and motivator for future research on human information processing and decision making.

Both the issues inherent in regulation of specific risks and the contexts in which such regulatory processes occur are often characterized by confusion and controversy. Tools based on multiattribute utility measurement (MAUT) can help to clarify public values in risk debates and thus to facilitate option invention and decision making. Stakeholder group representatives, in interaction with an analyst, structure their values relevant to the problem into a value tree. The analyst prepares a common tree, iterating until all stakeholder representatives accept it. Stakeholders express their values as weights on the common tree. This provides a basis for option invention and negotiation. The paper presents three illustrative applications.

This paper examines taxonomies for classifying risks and conflicts about risky technologies. First, we describe six levels of conflict that represent various " shades of gray" between purely factual and purely value laden conflicts in technology disputes. Subsequently, we survey several recent taxonomies of risks and hazards that were at least partly intended to clarify the nature of the public conflicts about technologies and their risks. After pointing out that non‐risk features frequently shape technology debates, we develop a taxonomy of the disputes themselves, based on a collection of 162 cases. Our taxonomy of technological controversies is related to the recent risk taxonomies and to the different levels of conflict. It turns out that the different technological disputes create quite different levels of conflict ranging from mainly factual (consumer products, drugs) to extremely value laden (nuclear power, genetic engineering). Depending on the type of controversy and level of conflict we suggest alternative conflict management strategies.