The term behavioral decision sciences refers to an interdisciplinary field that combines psychology, economics, statistics, computer science, and management science to understand how individuals, groups, and organizations make decision-relevant judgments and decisions themselves. The emphasis on the behavioral side of decision making sets the field apart from philosophical, mathematical, or economic theories or models of rational choiceLink to Wikipedia entry that either (a) are not concerned with how people choose but rather with how people ought to choose (topics common in philosophy and mathematics); (b) begin with the assumption that people are rational actors as part of the givens or axioms of the models themselves, used as tools for predicting or modeling behavior (topics common in mathematics and economics); or (c) are more concerned with predicting the outcomes of choice at the aggregate level rather than describing the actual processes that lead to those aggregate outcomes (common in traditional economics).
The behavioral decision sciences largely stem from two distinct—though overlapping—fields of study: one in psychology and the other in economics. Psychologists tend to fall into subdisciplines represented by the Venn diagrams associated with mathematical, cognitive, and social psychology. They study psychological processes in judgment and decision making (often abbreviated as J/DM or JDM on this website and the associated Substack). Economists focused on behavioral processes in judgment and decision making often collaborate with these psychologists and fall within the subfields represented by the intersecting Venn diagrams of behavioral and experimental economics. For various reasons, both sets of research are now often associated in public discourse with behavioral economics, although the roots of the field are more deeply embedded in psychology and psychological methods.
Although scientists in these two disciplines often have more in common with each other than with other practitioners in their respective fields (i.e., other psychologists or other economists), their distinct training means that psychologists and economists engaged in behavioral decision science often rely on different theoretical assumptions and methodological norms—reflected in their separate academic departments, societies, and peer-reviewed journals. For the purposes of this website and the associated Substack, however, the economic and psychological traditions are similar enough to be grouped together under the umbrella term behavioral decision sciences.