Notes on J. Richard Eiser and J. van der Pilgt (1988) Attitudes and Decisions London: Routledge ISBN 9780415011129 (WikiPedia link)

Up: Key References

I don't think this is as significant a book as the others mentioned on this site: I'm making notes on it here because I happen to own it. Still, it is a very useful book with succinct summaries of the heuristics and biases research (about 350 studies are referenced), and detailed application of these insights to questions of addiction, medical communication and nuclear energy.

It's very tempting to call this a book for non-specialists, since most of it is written in an easy to understand way, but it's not as accessible to the lay person as Sutherland's Irrationality: the Enemy Within. The target audience is psychology undergraduates. People with a scientific background are more likely to benefit from Baron's Thinking and Deciding.

Biases and heuristics mentioned in the book

1. The language of attitudes

2. The relationship between attitudes and behaviour

• cognitive dissonance
• self-perception and impression management

3. Attribution theory

• self-serving bias
• false consensus
• fundamental attribution error

4. Decisions, heuristics and biases

• subjective expected utility versus prospect theory
• probability assessment/blindness
• availability
• representativeness
• anchoring and adjustment
• confirmation/disconfirmation biases
• commitment
• defensive avoidance and hypervigilance
• groupthink

5. Health attitudes, attributions and addiction

6. Medical communication and judgement

7. Nuclear energy, risk perception and attitudes

8. Conclusions