Research Catalog

Title

Human judgment and social policy : irreducible uncertainty, inevitable error, unavoidable injustice / Kenneth R. Hammond.

Author

Hammond, Kenneth R.

Publication

New York : Oxford University Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xi, 436 pages : illustrations; 24 cm

Summary

• From Dramatic courtroom confrontations to international peace-making missions, the critical role of human judgment - complete with its failures, flaws, and successes - has never been more hotly debated and analyzed than it is today. This landmark work examines the dynamics of judgment and its impact on events which require the direction and control of social policy.
• Drawing on 50 years of empirical research in judgment and decision making, Hammond examines the possibilities for wisdom and cognitive competence in the formation of social policies, and applies these lessons to specific examples, such as the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the health care debate. Uncertainty, he tells us, can seldom be fully eliminated; thus error is inevitable, and injustice for some unavoidable.
• But the capacity for making wise judgments increases to the extent that we understand the potential pitfalls and their origin. With numerous examples from law, medicine, engineering, and economics, the author presents a comprehensive examination of the underlying dynamics of judgment, dramatizing its important role in the formation of social policies which affect us all.

Subjects

• Judgment
• Social policy > Decision making
• Uncertainty

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 402-425) and index.

Contents

1. Irreducible Uncertainty and the Need for Judgment -- 2. Duality of Error and Policy Formation -- 3. Coping with Uncertainty: The Rivalry Between Intuition and Analysis -- 4. Tension Between Coherence and Correspondence Theories of Competence -- 5. The Evolutionary Roots of Correspondence Competence -- 6. Reducing Rivalry Through Compromise -- 7. Task Structure and Cognitive Structure -- 8. Reducing Tension Through Complementarity -- 9. Is It Possible to Learn by Intervening? -- 10. Is It Possible to Learn from Representing? -- 11. Possibilities for Wisdom -- 12. The Possible Future of Cognitive Competence -- 13. Rivalry, Tension - Forever?

ISBN

0195097343 (acid-free paper)

LCCN

95035319

OCLC

• 32926183
• ocm32926183

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries