Social functionalist frameworks for judgment and choice: intuitive politicians, theologians, and prosecutors.

Full Abstract

Research on judgment and choice has been dominated by functionalist assumptions that depict people as either intuitive scientists animated by epistemic goals or intuitive economists animated by utilitarian ones. This article identifies 3 alternative social functionalist starting points for inquiry:
people as pragmatic politicians trying to cope with accountability demands from key constituencies in their lives, principled theologians trying to protect sacred values from secular encroachments, and prudent prosecutors trying to enforce social norms. Each functionalist framework stimulates middle-range theories that specify (a) cognitive-affective-behavioral strategies of coping with adaptive challenges and (b) the implications of these coping strategies for identifying empirical and normative boundary conditions on judgmental tendencies classified as errors or biases within the dominant research programs.

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Author information

Author/s: Tetlock, Philip E (PE);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, USA. tetlock(-atsign-)haas.berkeley.edu

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.; Review

Journal: Psychological review (Psychol Rev), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jul; vol 109 (issue 3) : pp 451-71

Dates: Created 2002/06/28; Completed 2002/07/23; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12088240, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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