August 2005 Conference

Many students and scholars, as well as the general public, would be significantly better off if decision behavior scholarship were taught more widely and effectively than it is today.

When people "decide," they commit themselves to courses of action intended to serve the interests and values of particular individuals, including but not limited to themselves. From this perspective, it is clear that decision making is a fundamental human activity. It lies at the heart of an enormous range of endeavors, from international diplomacy and finance to intimate, interpersonal relationships, legal proceedings, medical treatments, infant cognitive development, political action, and even neurological dysfunction. Yet, consistent with the bold assertion above, there are many indicators that knowledge about how people decide reaches far fewer students than it should. Understanding this phenomenon and exploring means to deal with it were the aims of the U.S. National Science Foundation-supported "Decision Behavior Teaching Conference" held at the University of Michigan 's Ross School of Business and Psychology Department in August 2006.

A variety of insights and proposals emerged from conference deliberations as well as from surveys associated with the conference. Many of those insights will be communicated in various forums during 2006. And numerous concrete proposals for action will be pursued during that time, too. One of the most vigorously endorsed proposals was for a means of providing prospective decision behavior teachers with better resources than are normally available to them. One concrete suggestion is embodied in the present teaching resource repository. The repository is intended to be a living and adaptive entity. Thus, all members of the international community of decision behavior scholars are urged to both draw on the resources in the repository as well as contribute new resources of their own to it.

Conferees: Hal Arkes (Ohio State; arkes.1@osu.edu ), Antoine Bechara (Iowa; bechara@usc.edu ), David Budescu (Illinois-Urbana Champaign; dbudescu@uiuc.edu ), Gretchen Chapman (Rutgers; gbc@rci.rutgers.edu ), Terry Connolly (Arizona; connolly@u.arizona.edu ), Rachel Croson (Pennsylvania; crosonr@wharton.upenn.edu ), Mandeep Dhami (Cambridge; mkd25@cam.ac.uk ), Gerry Evers-Kiebooms (Catholic University of Leuven; Gerry.Kiebooms@med.kuleuven.be ), Joseph Ferrari (DePaul; jferrari@depaul.edu ), Craig Fox (UCLA; cfx@anderson.ucla.edu ), Kathleen Galotti (Carleton; kgalotti@carleton.edu ), Itamar Gati (Hebrew; itamar.gati@huji.ac.il ), Adam Goodie (Georgia; goodie@uga.edu ), Robert Hamm (Oklahoma; Robert-hamm@ouhsc.edu ), David Hardman (London Metropolitan; d.hardman@londonmet.ac.uk ), Nigel Harvey (University College London; n.harvey@ucl.ac.uk ), Eric Johnson (Columbia; ejj3@columbia.edu ), Jay Koehler (Texas; Koehler@mail.utexas.edu ), Richard Larrick (Duke; larrick@duke.edu ), James Larson Jr. (Illinois-Chicago; jlarson@uic.edu ), Anthony Leiserowitz (Decision Research; ecotone@uoregon.edu ), Jennifer Lerner (Carnegie Mellon; jlerner@cmu.edu ), David Lublin (American; dlublin@american.edu ), Don Moore (Carnegie Mellon; dmoore@cmu.edu ), Daniel Read (Durham; Daniel.read2@durham.ac.uk ), Valerie Reyna (Cornell; vr53@cornell.edu ), Jay Russo (Cornell; jer9@cornell.edu ), Nadine Sarter (Michigan; sarter@umich.edu ), Sandra Schneider (South Florida; Sandra@cas.usf.edu ), Barry Schwartz (Swarthmore; bschwar1@swarthmore.edu ), Catherine Surra (Texas; surra@mail.utexas.edu ), Peter Todd (Max Planck, Indiana; pmtodd@indiana.edu ), Peter Ubel (Michigan; paubel@umich.edu ), Duane Wegener (Purdue; wegener@psych.purdue.edu ), Celia Wills (Michigan State; cwills@msu.edu ), George Wu (Chicago; wu@gsb.uchicago.edu ), Kimihiko Yamagishi (Tokyo Institute of Technology; kimihiko@ky.hum.titech.ac.jp ), Frank Yates (Michigan; jfyates@umich.edu )

Organizing Committee: Hal Arkes (Ohio State), Gretchen Chapman (Rutgers), Craig Fox (UCLA), Nigel Harvey (University College London), Jennifer Lerner (Carnegie Mellon), and Frank Yates, Chair (Michigan)

Project Staff: Mary Mohrbach, Anna Lee, Krin Thompson

For Further Information, Contact: Frank Yates ( jfyates@umich.edu )