Sampling in Judgment and Decision Making

Sampling approaches to judgment and decision making are distinct from  traditional accounts in psychology and neuroscience. While these  traditional accounts focus on limitations of the human mind as a major  source of bounded rationality, the sampling approach originates in a  broader cognitive-ecological perspective. It starts from the fundamental  assumption that in order to understand intra-psychic cognitive  processes one first has to understand the distributions of, and the  biases built into, the environmental information that provides input to  all cognitive processes. Both the biases and restriction, but also the  assets and capacities, of the human mind often reflect, to a  considerable degree, the irrational and rational features of the  information environment and its manifestations in the literature, the  Internet, and collective memory. Sampling approaches to judgment and  decision making constitute a prime example of theory-driven research  that promises to help behavioral scientists cope with the challenges of  replicability and practical usefulness.