Beyond Rationality The Search for Wisdom in a Troubled Time

by Hammond, Kenneth R.

• ISBN13: 9780195311747
• ISBN10: 0195311744
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-04
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

With Beyond Rationality, Kenneth R. Hammond, one of the most respected and experienced experts in judgment and decision-making, sums up his life's work and persuasively argues that decisions should be based on balance and pragmatism rather than rigid ideologies. Hammond has long focused on the dichotomy between theories of correspondence, whereby arguments correspond with reality, and coherence, whereby arguments strive to be internally consistent. He has persistently proposed a middle approach that draws from both of these modes of thought and so avoidsthe blunders of either extreme. In this volume, Hammond shows how particular ways of thinking that are common in the political process have led to the mistaken judgments that created our current political crisis. He illustrates this argument by analyzing penetrating case studies emphasizing thepolitical consequences that arise when decision makers consciously or unconsciously ignore their adversaries' particular mode of thought. These analyses range from why Kennedy and Khruschev misunderstood each other to why Colin Powell erred in his judgments over the presence of weapons of massdestruction in Iraq. For anyone concerned about the current state of politics in the U.S. and where it will lead us, Beyond Rationality is required reading.

Author Biography

Kenneth R. Hammond is Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Former Director of the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. A past president of the Society for Judgment and Decision-Making, he is the author of Judgments Under Stress (OUP, 1999), Human Judgment and Social Policy (OUP, 1996) and editor of The Essential Brunswik (OUP, 2001).

Table of Contents

Introduction	xi
Part I: The New Search for Wisdom
1 The Central Role of Human Judgment	3
2 Combating Uncertainty	15
Part II: Strategies of Human Judgment
3 The Strategy of Seeking Correspondence Competence	29
4 The (Mis)Judgments of Colin Powell	55
5 The Coherence Strategy: Trying to Be Rational	77
6 Kennedy and Khrushchev: Seeking—and Failing—to Learn about the Other	101
7 How the Drive for Coherence Brings Down Utopias	111
Part III: Tactics of Human Judgment
8 Continua	123
9 The Cognitive Continuum at the Supreme Court	131
10 Intuition: Seeking Empirical Accuracy the Easy Way	145
11 Analysis: Seeking Empirical Accuracy the Hard Way	163
12 Intuition: Seeking Rationality the Easy Way	173
13 Analysis: Seeking Rationality the Hard Way	185
14 Robert Rubin: Embedded in an Uncertain World	191
Part IV: Themes Guiding Research is Current Research Themes	199
16 The Author's Theme	225
Part V: Looking Backward
17 Trying to Learn from History with Bernard Lewis and Jared Diamond	245
18 Toward Better Practices	261
19 Ineptitude and the Tools of War	267
20 The New Search for Wisdom	285
Notes	297
Bibliography	319
Index	321