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The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice

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Environmental Impact Assessment, Technology Assessment, and Risk Analysis

Part of the book series: NATO ASI Series ((ASIG,volume 4))

Abstract

Explanations and predictions of people’s choices, in everyday life as well as in the social sciences, are often founded on the assumption of human rationality. The definition of rationality has been much debated, but there is general agreement that rational choices should satisfy some elementary requirements of consistency and coherence. In this chapter, we describe decision problems in which people systematically violate the requirements of consistency and coherence, and we trace these violations to the psychological principles that govern the perception of decision problems and the evaluation of options.

This Work was supported by the office of Naval Research under contract N00014-79-C-0077 to Stanforf University. This Material is reprinted with permission from Science, 1981, 211, 453–458. Copyright 1981 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Amos Tversky

  2. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada

    Daniel Kahneman

Authors
  1. Amos Tversky
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  2. Daniel Kahneman
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. U.S. National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C., USA

    Vincent T. Covello

  2. State University of New York at Albany, Albany, New York, USA

    Jeryl L. Mumpower

  3. Centre for Technology and Policy Studies, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands

    Pieter J. M. Stallen

  4. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA

    V. R. R. Uppuluri

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© 1985 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Tversky, A., Kahneman, D. (1985). The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice. In: Covello, V.T., Mumpower, J.L., Stallen, P.J.M., Uppuluri, V.R.R. (eds) Environmental Impact Assessment, Technology Assessment, and Risk Analysis. NATO ASI Series, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70634-9_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70634-9_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-70636-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-70634-9

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