This resource offers a discription and a critical evaluation of important research on the psychology of decision making. The chapters examine the nature of the psychogical process underlying decision making and the problems that people face in their everyday decisions. The authors approach is concerned with explaining how decisions are made in terms of motives, cognitive processes and mental representations. They draw on the insights of cognitive psychology to analyse the decision into more elementary process. The emphasis is on the analysis of what individuals actually do rather than on comparisons with idealised optimal or rational decision makers. The decision process is considered to be one that is extended in time: it involves a series of information search, judgement and evaluation process which are followed by further post-decision process that serve to help people to adjust to the implications of their decisions and to understand their own goals and values. It is recognised that decisions are made within a social context and need to be justified to oneself and to others. In a similar vien the question of helping people to improve their decisions is approached from considerations of how they actually make them, rather than from a narrow focus on discrepancies between actual and idealised decisions.

This book should serve as a source book for those who want to update their knowledge about research within the descriptive decision making approach. In addition, the book presents some of the most recent results of the authors' own decision making research.