Bounded Rationality: Heuristics, Judgment, And ...
This workshop is sponsored by the Center for Formal Epistemology, which is based on the philosophy department at Carnegie Mellon University. The department has a long tradition of interdisciplinary work in bounded rationality, heuristics, and choice. One of the ideas of this workshop is to celebrate the memory and the work on Herb Simon, who was an active member of the department and the CMU community. Various members of the department remain interested in the program of bounded rationality that Simon proposed initially and this workshop intends to continue work in this direction.
Bounded Rationality: Heuristics, Judgment, and ...
During the use of hypothesis-specific heuristics, clinicians directed their efforts toward a diagnosis that confirmed their hypothesis and refuted all possible contradictions. This finding is in contrast with the classical idea of clinicians frequently attempting to refute their initial diagnosis through differential diagnoses [33], or clinicians trying to rule out potentially serious diagnosis [34]. Some of the work in this area acknowledges these findings as confirmation bias and suggest that directing data collection to the confirmation of hypothesis can lead to sustaining an inappropriate, and most of the time, premature hypothesis, neglecting important alternative data [9], [21], [33]. On the other hand, there are authors who encourage the use of a positive test strategy (i.e. focused on confirming rather than rejecting the hypothesis) since the replication of cases consistent with the hypothesis tested have a good chance of achieving the expected result [33]. Our findings were consistent with the later view, since while clinicians do not look for a contradiction themselves, their action, when one is pointed out by the patient or environment, is to try to refute it, sustaining their initial hypothesis. This seems to be related to the additional effort that would be necessary to re-start the process of looking for another hypothesis. This phenomenon again points to bounded rationality which looks for satisfying and not optimizing the costs of giving up of a hypothesis without trying to sustain it, as this search could exceed the benefits [35]. If the same process is compared with the DCPGs for final diagnostic or therapeutic conclusions, DCPGs would list several elimination steps for differential diagnosis. This would make the whole process cumbersome and cost driven, not only for the physician but also for the patient. The reason for this complexity lies in the nature of the DCPGs, which are disease specific and not patient specific. A clinician may encounter different types of patients with different and sometimes even multiple diseases in the clinic [36]. Thus, a physician's judgment is based on several other factors pertinent to that specific patient and environment and not only the ones suggested by DCPGs. The DCPGs could rarely provide recommendations on these aspects. Following any disease specific guidelines can always put the physician in dilemma about reaching a conclusion for confirming the hypothesis about the diagnosis. In the given scenario, physician's tacit knowledge and contradictions put forth by the environment and by the patient are also important.
My colleagues and I have recently added two other important bounds to the list. Chugh et al. (2005) and Banaji and Bhaskar (2000) introduced the concept of bounded ethicality, which refers to the notion that our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves. Second, Chugh and Bazerman (2007) developed the concept of bounded awareness to refer to the broad array of focusing failures that affect our judgment, specifically the many ways in which we fail to notice obvious and important information that is available to us. 041b061a72