Biased experts, biased decision makers:
How to optimize the quality of judgments in Decision Analysis?
A Webinar jointly sponsored by the
Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS and the Society of Decision Professionals
July 17 @ 8:00 am PT
Decision analysis models rely heavily on judgments of experts and stakeholders, for instance to estimate the parameters such as probabilities of events, risk tolerance and value trade-offs.
In the 1970s, psychologists including Kahneman & Tversky demonstrated that such judgments can be systematically biased. Since then, behavioral decision researchers have identified hundreds of cognitive biases that affect judgments.
Moreover, we now understand better how experts and decision makers may also suffer from motivational biases, which can drive selective attention and generate distorted assessments. In addition to these individual biases, social psychologists found that group biases and dysfunctional group behavior may also affect judgments.
These biases may cause serious detrimental effects on the quality of our models. However, while the earliest of these findings are reflected in decision analysis techniques described in textbooks, the current body of behavioral literature is largely disconnected from the prescriptive practice of decision analysis.
Decision analysts are thus confronted with tough elicitation tasks without clear guidance: Which biases really matter? Which bias should we target? In which modeling steps do they creep in? And which debiasing strategy should we employ?
In this webinar you will learn what are the most relevant biases for decision analysis. You will explore the use of debiasing strategies against biases for every modeling task requiring a judgment. You will learn how we can debias experts and decision makers in practice.
The webinar is based on an extensive evidence-based review of the subject and on my experience of helping many global health organizations with decision analysis. This talk will help you achieve our goal: optimize the quality of human judgments in our models.
or copy and paste into your browser: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/5375439079886481666
Speaker: Gilberto Montibeller
Prof. of Management Science
Loughborough University, UK
Gilberto Montibeller is a Full Professor of Management Science and the Head of the Management Science & Operations Group at Loughborough University in England. He is an expert on multi-criteria decision analysis and behavioral issues in decision analysis. Dr Montibeller has an extensive experience in applying decision analysis for more than 20 years, consulting to both private and public organisations in the USA, Britain, Continental Europe and South America. He has published widely in decision science journals and is Associate Editor of the Informs Decision Analysis journal.
Moderator: Jeffrey Keisler
Prof. of Management Information Systems
University of Massachusetts Boston
Jeff Keisler has been working in decision analysis for over 30 years, first at General Motors, Strategic Decisions Group and Argonne National Laboratory, and more recently as a Professor at University of Massachusetts Boston. Along the way he worked with Howard Raiffa for his PhD in Decision Sciences at Harvard, became a Fellow of the Society of Decision Professionals served as President of the INFORMS Decision Analysis Society, and received its award for Best Publication for the book Portfolio Decision Analysis.
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Karen Jenni
President, Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS
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