image description
152002Volume 15, Issue10December 2002

Presidential Column

Susan T. Fiske
Susan T. Fiske
Princeton University
APS President 2002 - 2003
All columns

In this Issue:
Bringing Research on Judgment, Decision Making to Public Policy

About the Observer

The Observer is the online magazine of the Association for Psychological Science and covers matters affecting the research, academic, and applied disciplines of psychology. The magazine reports on issues of interest to psychologist scientists worldwide and disseminates information about the activities, policies, and scientific values of APS.

APS members receive a monthly Observer newsletter that covers the latest content in the magazine. Members also may access the online archive of Observer articles going back to 1988.

Read more

Latest Under the Cortex Podcast

Trending Topics >


  • Thumbnail Image for Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disaster Response and Recovery

    Disasters like Hurricane Florence and Typhoon Mangkhut draw massive media coverage, trauma interventions, and financial donations to victims. But psychological research shows the efforts don’t always yield the intended benefits.

Up Front


  • Bringing Research on Judgment, Decision Making to Public Policy

    As part of this years continuing series illustrating the experiences of interdisciplinary research, Harvard Business School professor Max Bazerman reflects on the applicability of interdisciplinary decision science for solving some of our most pressing problems. - Susan T. Fiske APS President Research on the psychology of decision biases has been a growth field over the last two decades, culminating in Danny Kahneman 's Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. Psychologists from various areas have enthusiastically assessed the significance of our judgmental errors, considered whether biases are evolutionarily adaptive, and explored the conditions under which these biases are strongest. Others have denied the existence of bias or argued for its benefits. Yet we are tragically behind in applying what we know about biases in human judgment to real-life policy decisions.