Decision-making
Learning about the world is only one half of the problem facing an intelligent agent. The other half is taking actions within that world. How do people take action based on limited information, when operating under time pressure, or when faced with uncertainty? How do people search for information on which to make that action? How do strategies change if the world changes? I am particularly interested in how people reason in a social context or based on social assumptions, and how the statistical structure of the environment supports (or fails to support) that reasoning.
Current projects involve understanding how people make decisions in ambiguous or uncertain situations with rare or extreme payoffs, how people take into account the informational value of data when searching, and how trust in information providers affects what decisions people make and what info they pass on. Previous work (to which I may return) investigates how strategies are affected by evidentiary value, number of options, and time pressure.
Andrew Perfors
Professor
I seek to understand how people reason and think, both on their own and in groups.