New tools for decision analysts

This paper presents psychological research that can help people make better decisions. Decision analysts typically: 1) elicit outcome probabilities; 2) assess attribute weights; and 3) suggest the option with the highest overall value. Decision analysis can be challenging because of environmental and psychological issues. Fast and frugal methods such as natural frequency formats, frugal multiattribute models, and fast and frugal decision trees can address these issues. Not only are the methods fast and frugal, but they can also produce results that are surprisingly close to or even better than those obtained by more extensive analysis. Apart from raising awareness of these findings among engineers, the authors also call for further research on the application of fast and frugal methods to decision analysis.