Book Review

STRAIGHT CHOICES: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF DECISION MAKING. By Benjamin R. Newell, David A. Lagnado, &
David R. Shanks. New York: Psychology Press, 2007.
Reviewed by Guillermo Campitelli, School of Accounting, Finance & Economics, Edith Cowan University, 270 Joondalup Drive, Joondalup,
WA 6027, Australia.
Straight Choices is an excellent book on psychology of
decision making. It offers an innovative approach on how to
understand judgments and decisions. For the authors, the
investigation of the processes that occur before making a
decision or a judgment is essential to determine how well
people make decisions or judgments. A choice is part of a
cycle of processes that includes the following: (i) discovering
cues that would help in making a choice; (ii) acquiring cue
information; (iii) combining this information to make a nal
choice; and (iv) incorporating information provided by the
environment, relative to that choice (i.e. feedback). The
number of times we are exposed to decisionmaking
situations of a similar type and the quality of feedback we
receive from the environment are what explain individual
differences in preferences and in accuracy of judgments.
Guided by this thesis, the authors, besides comprehensive-
ly reviewing the traditional literature on judgmental biases,
the violations of normative models of choice, and the use of
heuristics, also present numerous studies (a good number of
their own) in which changes in judgments and decisions occur
as a function of learning. Particularly, the authors present
research in multiplecue probability learning. The beauty of
this paradigm is that it affords the possibility to investigate
different types of judgments and decisions. In different
multiplecue probability learning experiments, participants
have to do the following: (i) predict the value of a criterion
(e.g. annual salary of a person) based on predictive cues
(e.g. name of the company in which he or she works); (ii) choose
an alternative (e.g. a diagnosis for a given patient) based on
howcues (e.g. symptoms) are related to alternatives in previous
trials; and (iii) make a decision (e.g. choosing a company to
invest in) based on predictive cues (e.g. nancial reserves of the
companies). In all these cases, participants are given the
opportunity to learn the predictive relationship between cues and
alternatives or criteria by making choices and receiving
feedback. The rst type of experiments is related to the lens
model by Brunswik and emphasizes the regression of judgments
and criteria to cues. The second type is in the tradition of
associate learning and is mainly interested in how people
learn the contingencies of the environment. The third type is
an adaptation of the lens model to investigate how people
search through cues. One of the interests of the latter is to
nd out whether participants use fastandfrugal heuristics in
their search.
Given the importance given to learning, it is not surprising
that Straight Choices also shows studies on how experts
(i.e. individuals who have been learning in their elds for
many years) make judgments and decisions. I have carried out
research following the expertise approach by Herbert Simon,
and I am a strong advocate for the use of his expertise
approach in decision making (Campitelli & Gobet, 2010).
Hence, I was delighted to nd out that scholars of the caliber
of Straight Choices authors propose a similar approach to
that of Simons in a book of psychology of decision making.
To highlight the importance of learning in decision making,
consider the following situations: Paul is taking his rst tennis
lesson. His coach explains to him how to approach the ball,
how to move the arm in a horizontal trajectory, and the timing
of the movement. Paul understands everything perfectly and
is ready to go. First attempt: Paul approaches the ball, tries to
hit it with a bottomup movement of the arm at the wrong
time, and he misses the ball. This experiment could be
repeated with thousands of Pauls, and we would obtain a
similar result: misjudgment of the trajectory of the ball and
that of the racket and probably bias (tendency to use a
bottomup movement). However, if Paul does not give up
and keeps taking tennis lessons, he will be able to hit the ball,
correct his bias, and, possibly, decide voluntarily where to
direct the ball. The participants in judgment and decision
making experiments are usually in a situation similar to Pauls
rst lesson. They are faced with a task in which they do not
know very well what to do. Hence, they do what they are
used to do, hoping this would lead them to solve the task
properly. In other words, they tend to make mistakes, and
these are systematic (i.e. these mistakes are not random errors,
but they are biases). Traditional research in decision making
tends to stop research here. That is, the participants are not
given opportunities to learn. Straight Choices shows the
research of the authors and that of other researchers that pay
attention to learning. It presents evidence that in several
circumstances, if given opportunities to learn (sometimes
1800 trials), participants are able to avoid typical biases
(e.g. baserate neglect) observed in oneshot decisions.
There is a difference between Pauls rst tennis lesson and
the decisionmaking tasks. If we asked Paul how condent
he is that he hit the ball, he would say 0%. On the other
hand, when participants in calibration studies make condent
judgments on the accuracy of their choices, they tend to be
overcondent. The difference is that Paul has access to clear
feedback (he can see and feel that his racket did not hit the
ball), whereas the participants in calibration studies do not
have access to feedback. Feedback is an essential aspect of
Straight Choices approach. In chapter 4, the authors discuss
whether outcome feedback is good enough to improve the
Copyright

2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Journal of Behavioral Decision Making
J. Behav. Dec. Making, 25: 210211 (2012)
accuracy of judgments. We are informed that in judgment
tasks in which the participants have to predict a value of a
criterion based on cues, the outcome feedback is good
enough when there are only two or three cues that are correlated
to the criterion. In tasks with more cues, a more detailed
feedback is necessary to improve the accuracy of judgments.
After a brief introduction to concepts and a historical
context (chapters 1 and 2), the authors tackle the issue of
judgments (chapters 37), decisions (chapters 812), context
of choice (chapters 13 and 14), and practical applications of
decisionmaking research (chapter 15). My favorite chapters
are 3, 4, 7, 11, and 12 because in these chapters the authors
present their original approach. However, the emphasis on
learning and cognitive processes permeates the whole book.
Hence, by reading the book, I gathered new insights in the
more wellknown judgment and decisionmaking topics.
Another important feature of Straight Choices is that it
makes important novel claims. For example, the authors
propose not only that learning provides a database by which
we can make our judgments but also that the mechanisms that
operate during learning are active in the judgment process. In
chapter 7, the authors explain that, when people are exposed
to cues and outcomes, they learn the contingencies between
cues and outcomes (i.e. probability of an outcome when a cue
is present minus probability of an outcome when this cue is
absent). This means that outcomecue contingency is not the
same as probability of an outcome given a cue. Many of the
judgment errors people make are because they make
probability judgments based on contingencies instead of
probabilities. To explain how the participants approximate to
optimal choice after extended practice, the authors improve
the famous Rescorla & Wagners (1972) model of weights of
internal associations between cues and outcomes by adding a
function that transforms association weights into behavior
(see chapter 12). In chapter 4, the authors present two types of
strategies: compensatory and noncompensatory. The former
considers the values of alternatives in a number of cues and
uses the importance of each cue to weigh these values. The
noncompensatory strategies use the rst cue that discriminates
between alternatives and ignore the other cues. The authors
present research (some of their own) that shows that both types
of strategies are used. They propose that the evidence
accumulation model by Lee and Cummins (2004) captures
individual variability in the use of search strategies. This
model states that all the participants use an evidence
accumulation strategy but with different thresholds on what
they consider enough evidence to stop searching.
Readers aiming to improve their choices could nd useful
tools in chapter 15. The authors show a number of techniques
or procedures that have some empirical evidence to support
them or that were developed based on empirical evidence.
Even though readers may be disappointed that there are not as
many techniques as in other books, the authors choice of
limiting themselves to sound techniques is straight: relying on
techniques with no empirical support or not based on sound
decisionmaking principles could lead to negligent decisions.
Decisionmaking researchers (including myself) should make
more efforts aiming at generating and testing decisionmaking
tools. I believe, the emphasis the authors put in learning and
feedback is in the correct direction to achieve this goal.
Altogether, the authors made an impressive work on
integrating different paradigms (e.g. associative learning, lens
model, probability judgments) to offer a novel view on how
people make choices. Their emphasis on learning, cognitive
processes, and feedback is a very important contribution to
the eld.
REFERENCES
Campitelli, G., & Gobet, F. (December 2010). Herbert Simons
decisionmaking approach: Investigation of cognitive processes
in experts. Review of General Psychology, 14(4), 354364.
Lee, M. D., & Cummins, T. D. R. (2004). Evidence accumulation in
decision making: Unifying take the best and rational models.
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 11, 343352.
Rescorla, R. A., & Wagner, A. R. (1972). A theory of Pavlovian
conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and
nonreinforcement. In A. H. Black, &W. F. Prokasy (Eds.), Classical
conditioning II: Current theory and research (pp. 6499). New
York: AppletonCenturyCrofts.
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com)
DOI:10.1002/bdm.732
211 G. Campitelli
Copyright

2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25: 210211 (2012)
DOI: 10.1002/bdm