Abstract (eng)
Decision-making is an integral part of our lives. For decades, human beings were regarded as complete rational decision makers, prescribed to behave to the norms and axioms of mathematics and economics. However, for making decisions in consistence with these models humans do possess neither the knowledge and time nor the required computational capacities; as coined by Herbert Simon, their rationality is bounded. Instead, judgmental evaluations and choices are made by the use of cognitive heuristics, colloquially called ‘mental short-cuts’. According to the state-of-the-art literature, cognitive heuristics can be divided into judgmental and choice heuristics. Judgmental heuristics are covered in the Heuristics and Biases Program as introduced by Tversky and Kahneman; the ‘fast and frugal’ approach of the ABC research group of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development deals with choice heuristics for the most part – conscious and adaptive strategies, intentionally designed to simplify choice. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how these heuristics influence the individual’s decision process, as well as to study their impact on the interpersonal negotiation situation.