2. DESIRE THEORY
The theory of decision is concerned with analyzing how a person
chooses that action that, among a set of possible actions, leads to
the best result, given their preferences. The canonical paradigm of
decision theory is characterized by having an individual who has to
make a decision (anyone) and whose preferences are taken for
granted; thus the theory of the decision does not enter to consider the
nature of the preferences of the individuals, nor why these prefer
some things instead of others; the only thing that matters is that these
preferences satisfy certain basic criteria of logical consistency,
among which, due to their importance, the following should be noted:
Transitivity: for all X, Y and Z, if X is strictly preferred to Y, and is
strictly preferred to Z, X will be preferred to Z,
• Completeness: for all X and all Y, either X is preferred to Y, or Y is
preferred to X, or the individual is indifferent to them,
• Asymmetry: if X is strictly preferred to Y, and is not strictly preferred to
X,
• Symmetry of the differences: for all X and Y, if X is indifferent to Y, Y is
indifferent to X.
3. TYPES OF DECISION
There are types of decisions that are interesting from the point of
view of the development of a theory, these are:
Decision without risk between incommensurable goods (goods
that can not be measured under the same units).
Choice under unpredictability.
Intertemporal choice - study of the relative value that people
assign to two or more assets at different moments of time.
Social decisions: decisions made in a group or under an
organizational structure.
4. Parts of the theory
Most decision theory is normative or prescriptive, that is, it
concerns the identification of the best decision that can be
made, assuming that a person who has to make decisions
(decision maker) is able to be in an environment of Complete
information, able to calculate accurately and completely
rationally.
The practical application of this prescriptive approach (of how
people should make and make decisions) is called decision
analysis and provides a search for tools, methodologies and
software to help people make better decisions.
5. Timeless choice
This area concerns a type of decision making where a series of
actions intervene in different moments of time. For example, if I
received a large amount of euros in a moment of time, I could
spend them on a luxury holiday, providing me with immediate
pleasure, or on the contrary I could invest it in a pension plan,
which would provide me with a benefit in the future. The
question arises as to which is the optimal decision, the answer
depends partially on factors such as the value of life
expectancy, inflation, interest, trust in the pension system, etc.
However, although all these factors were taken into account
when making the decision, human behavior deviates from the
predictions of prescriptive theory, giving rise to alternative
models in which, for example, the objective interest is replaced
by a subjective discount.
6. Other areas of decision theory concern the difficulty of making
decisions due in part to the "complexity" of calculating
expectations, or because of the complexity of the organization
itself that has to make decisions. In such cases the theory is not
so fixed in obtaining a calculation based on how a real decision
is diverted from an optimal one, but in the measure of the
difficulty of determining the optimal behavior when making the
decision. An example of this theory can be found in the Club of
Rome, which has developed a model of economic growth and
resources based on a model that can help politicians to make
decisions in complex situations.
7. Paradox of the election
It has been observed in many cases that there is a paradox that
many capacities to choose can lead to a poor decision or even
a wrong choice. Sometimes the problem has been analyzed
from a paralysis of the analysis, real or perceived, or even from
a rational ignorance. A large number of researchers including
Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper have published studies
based on this phenomenon.
8.
9. BIBLIOGRAFIA
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teor%C3%ADa_de_la_decisi%C3%B3n
(Goode, 2001)
Volver arriba↑ 2004 book, The Paradox of Choice
Sven Ove Hansson, "Decision Theory: A Brief Introduction", Una
introducción (Formato PDF) Una excelente y sencilla introducción al tema
("punto de vista no técnico")
Paul Goodwin and George Wright, Decision Analysis for Management
Judgment, 3rd edition. Chichester: Wiley, 2004 ISBN 0-470-86108-8 (cubre
por igual la parte normativa y no normativa de la teoría)
Robert Clemen. Making Hard Decisions: An Introduction to Decision
Analysis, 2nd edition. Belmont CA: Duxbury Press, 1996. (cubre sólo la
parte normativa de la teoría de la decisión)
D.W. North. "A tutorial introduction to decision theory". IEEE Trans. Systems
Science and Cybernetics, 4(3), 1968. Reprinted in Shafer & Pearl. (cubre
sólo la parte normativa de la teoría de la decisión)
Glenn Shafer and Judea Pearl, editors. Readings in uncertain reasoning.
Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo, CA, 1990.
