This book is a collection of papers presented at a conference, “Decision Making: Descriptive, Normative, and Prescriptive Interactions,” held in Boston at the Harvard Business School during June 16–18, 1983. The conference was one of several celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Harvard Business School. It might equally have been held as a celebration of the renaissance of interest in the analysis of decision making under uncertainty that has occurred in recent years. Not since the early 1950s, in the aftermath of the pathbreaking work by von Neumann and Morgenstern, has so much intellectual enthusiasm been directed at the question of how people should, and do, behave when called upon to take action in the face of uncertainty.

When Amos Tversky visited Harvard in the spring of 1982, the three of us had long discussions about the philosophy behind the contribution made by various disciplines to research on decision making. It was clear that mathematicians (decision theorists) are interested in proposing rational procedures for decision making – how people should make decisions if they wish to obey certain fundamental laws of behavior. Psychologists are interested in how people do make decisions (whether or not rational) and in determining the extent to which their behavior is compatible with any rational model. They are also interested in learning the cognitive capacities and limitations of ordinary people to process the information required of them if they do not naturally behave rationally, but wish to.