Measurement and decision making at the University of Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s |
| |
Authors: | Floris Heukelom |
| |
Institution: | 1. Assistant Professor of History and Methodology of Economics, Radboud University, Nijmegen;2. In 2009 he defended a PhD dissertation on the history of behavioral economics, which he is currently revising into a book. Web site: http://www.ru.nl/fm/heukelom/. |
| |
Abstract: | This article explores the emergence of Clyde Coombs' mathematical psychology and Ward Edwards' behavioral decision research at the University of Michigan in the 1950s and 1960s. It shows why and how the mathematical psychological focus on the mathematics of measurement neatly complemented the experimental work on rational human decision making of the behavioral decision researchers. Both understood measurement as the rational decision of a human being between two or more stimuli, or values, and viewed the experimental measurement of actual human decision behavior as a key objective of psychology. For both “measurement theory in psychology was] behavior theory.” © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|