Nancy S. Kim, Ph.D.

Second edition coming in 2025

How do we make the judgments that inform our lives? In this innovative textbook, Nancy S. Kim presents a multidisciplinary introduction to the dynamic field of judgment and decision-making. Throughout the book, insights from traditional cognitive approaches are combined with findings from fields as diverse as neuropsychology, behavioral economics, social, developmental and clinical psychology, and philosophy. The book surveys both classic and contemporary research and builds beyond findings from laboratory settings to emphasize real-world application of theory in many different contexts. It is an essential companion to any student taking a first course in judgment and decision-making, or a general survey course in psychology, cognitive psychology, social psychology, or business.

People can embrace radically different beliefs and perspectives. How can people disagree so profoundly, why are beliefs often so resistant to conflicting evidence, and when and how are beliefs susceptible to change? This textbook guides readers to seek answers to these questions through a systematic, critical exploration of relevant psychology research. The book examines political and moral beliefs, extremist beliefs, beliefs about other people, beliefs about ourselves, beliefs about science, beliefs about the nature of mental and medical illness, paranormal and superstitious beliefs, and conspiracy theories through the lens of current research in memory, reasoning, judgment, decision-making, emotion, social cognition, and cognitive development.

Nancy S. Kim studied people's thinking, reasoning, and decision-making for over 20 years. Her general approach was to concurrently address basic issues in cognitive science and applied issues in clinical science and practice. From the perspective of cognitive science, her work addressed how causal and explanatory beliefs are mentally represented and organized, and how this representation affects basic cognitive processes such as categorization, memory, judgments, and decision-making. From the perspective of clinical science, she simultaneously examined how people's prior knowledge, beliefs, and expectations influence the assessment and diagnosis of medical and mental illness, memory for patients' symptoms and medical information, judgments of psychological abnormality, decisions about treatment, and prejudice toward and stigmatization of patients. Her work examined these issues in students, lay people, patients, clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, nurse practitioners, and primary care physicians.