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This chapter documents an exchange between Leonard Savage, founder of the subjective probability approach to decision-making, and Karl Popper, advocate of the so-called propensity approach to probability, of which there is no knowledge in the literature on probability theory. Early in 1958, just after being informally tested by Daniel Ellsberg with a test of consistency in decision-making processes that originated the so-called Ellsberg Paradox, Savage was made aware that a similar argument had been put forward by Popper. Popper found it paradoxical that two apparently similar events should be attributed the same subjective probability even though evidence supporting judgment in one case was different than in the other case. On this ground, Popper rejected the subjective probability approach. Inspection of the Savage Papers archived at Yale University Library makes it possible to document Savage’s reaction to Popper, of which there is no evidence in his published writings. Savage wrote to Popper denying that his criticism had paradoxical content and a brief exchange followed. The chapter shows that while Savage was unconvinced by Popper’s argument he was not hostile to an axiomatically founded generalization of his theory.

Introduction – Markowitz (1952) argues that individuals act rationally in their financial decisions. In contrast, Kahneman and Tversky (1979) claim that the psychological characteristics of people significantly affect financial decisions. In making these decisions, factors such as age, gender, and educational status may have an impact.

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to determine whether financial literacy has an impact on individuals’ cognitive biases related to financial investments.

Methodology – A sample of 444 individuals were surveyed.

Findings – In the results of study (1) it was determined that financial literacy leads to differences in cognitive biases; and (2) cognitive biases of individuals who do not receive finance education are different from individuals who receive finance education and professionals in the business world. The findings indicate that the increase in the level of financial literacy of individuals will reduce the cognitive biases and heuristics, and therefore will have a positive effect on the investor behavior in financial markets.

Strong versions of the Precautionary Principle (PP) require regulators to prohibit or impose technology controls on activities that pose uncertain risks of possibly significant environmental harm. This decision rule is conceptually unsound and would diminish social welfare. Uncertainty as such does not justify regulatory precaution. While they should reject PP, regulators should take appropriate account of societal aversion to risks of large harm and the value of obtaining additional information before allowing environmentally risky activities to proceed.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new approach to solving the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy stochastic multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problems.

To transform the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy number (IVIFN) into a computational numerical value, a new precision score (P-score) function is developed based on the degrees of membership, non-membership and hesitation. The prospect decision-making matrix is derived by applying P-score function and Prospect theory. A new criteria weighting model is put forward based on the least square method, the maximizing deviation method and Prospect theory. Consequently, combined criteria weighting model with the prospect decision-making matrix, the integrated prospect value is derived which presents a measurement scale for ranking the order of alternatives.

As a result, the method of the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy stochastic MCDM is suggested. In this method, the new P-score function responses the comprehensive information of the criteria. The prospect decision-making matrix can reflect the risk attitude of the decision maker. The new criteria weighting model can express both the subjective considerations of the decision maker and the objective information meaning.

The research results may lack generalizability for other fuzzy decision making because of the chosen research approach for IVIFN decision making. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further.

The developed approach can be applied in many decision-making fields such as selection of renewable energy alternatives, assessment of flexible manufacturing system alternatives and human resource alternatives performance evaluation, etc. where the evaluation values are IVIFNs.

This paper succeeds in studying the interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy MCDM based on Prospect theory, which has not been reported in the existing academic literature.

This study aims to answer the question whether investment funds managers exhibit behavioural biases in their investment decisions. Furthermore, it investigates if fund managers, as a group of institutional investors, make decisions in response to central bank’s communication as well as other information in relation to various behavioural inclinations.

A comprehensive study was conducted based on a questionnaire, which is composed of three main parts exploring: (1) general information about the funds under the management of the surveyed group of fund managers, (2) factors that influence the investment process with an emphasis on the National Bank of Poland communication and (3) behavioural inclinations of the surveyed group. Cronbach’s alpha statistic was applied for measuring the reliability of the survey questionnaire and then chi-squared test was used to investigate the relationships between the answers provided in the survey.

The central bank’s communication matters for investors, but its impact on their decisions appears to be only moderate. Interest rates were found to be the most important announcements for investment fund managers. The stock market was the most popular market segment where the investments were made. The ultra-short time horizon played no, or only small, role in the surveyed fund managers’ decisions as most of them invested in a longer horizon covering 1 to 5 years. Moreover, most respondents declared that they considered in their decisions the information about market expectations published in the media. Finally, majority of the fund managers manifested limited rationality and were subject to behavioural biases, but the decisions and behavioural inclinations were independent and, in most cases, they did not influence each other.

The results reported in this study can be used in practice to better understand and to improve the fund managers’ decision-making processes.

Apart from the commonly tested behavioural biases in the group of institutional investors in the existing literature, such as loss aversion, disposition effect or overconfidence, this paper also focuses on the less intensively analysed behavioural inclinations, i.e. framing, illusion of the control, representativeness, sunk cost effect and fast thinking. The originality of this study further lies in the way the research was conducted through interviews with fund managers, who were found to be subject to behavioural biases, although those behavioural inclinations did not influence their investment decisions. This finding indicates that professionalism and collectivism in the group of institutional investors protect them from irrationality.

Behavioral solutions to our cognitive biases have long been studied in the literature. However, there is still ample evidence of behavioral biases in decision-making, with only limited improvement in the medium/long term even when debiasing methods are applied. The purpose of this paper is to describe how financial investors could benefit from a proactive management of emotions combined with a set of learning and decision-making heuristics to make more efficient investments in the long run.

First, the authors offer a classification of the appropriate quantitative and qualitative methodologies to use in different ecological environments. Then, the authors offer a list of detailed heuristics to be implemented as behavioral principles intended to induce more long-lasting changes than the original rules offered by the adaptive toolbox literature. Finally, the authors provide guidelines on how to embed artificial intelligence and cognitive diversity within the investment decision architecture.

Improvements in decision skills involve changes that rarely succeed through a single event but through a succession of steps that must be habitualized. This paper argues that implementing a more conscious set of personal and group principles is necessary for long-lasting changes and provides guidelines on how to minimize systematic errors with adaptive heuristics. To maximize their positive effects, the principles outlined in this paper should be embedded in an architecture that fosters cognitively diverse teams. Moreover, when using artificial intelligence, the authors advise to maximize the interpretability/accuracy ratio in building decision support systems.

The paper proposes a theoretical reflection on the field of behavioral research and decision-making in finance, where the chief goal is to offer practical advices to investors. The literature on debiasing cognitive biases is limited to the detection and correction of immediate effects. The authors go beyond the traditional three building blocks developed by the behavioral finance literature (search rules, stopping rules and decision rules) and aim at helping investors who are interested in finding long-term solutions to their cognitive biases.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with interval grey-stochastic multi-attribute decision-making problems. It proposes a VIKOR method based on prospect theory in which probabilities and the attribute value are both grey numbers.

In the prospect theory the results values and probability weight are used while the utility and probability values in the expected utility theory, which the more realistically reflect and describe the decision makers on the optimal process. VIKOR method makes the decision acceptable superiority and decision process stability. At the same time, a new interval grey number entropy is put forward, which is used to calculate the index weight of unknown.

The paper provides a VIKOR method based on prospect theory in which probabilities and the attribute value are both grey numbers. And the validity and feasibility of the method are illustrated by an example.

Although VIKOR is much closer to PIS than TOPSIS, at the same time VIKOR method can get the compromise solution with priority, researchers are encouraged to carry on comparative study further.

The paper includes interval grey-stochastic multi-attribute decision-making method and implications. The validity and feasibility of the method are illustrated by a case.

This paper proposes a VIKOR method based on prospect theory in which probabilities and the attribute value are both interval grey numbers. At the same time, a new interval grey number entropy is put forward, which is used to calculate the index weight of unknown.

With respect to multi-stage group risk decision-making problems in which all the attribute values take the form of grey number, and the weights of stages and decision makers are unknown, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new decision-making method based on grey target and prospect theory.

First, the sequencing and distance between two grey numbers are introduced. Then, a linear operator with the features of the “rewarding good and punishing bad” is presented based on the grey target given by decision maker, and the prospect value function of each attribute based on the zero reference point is defined. Next, weight models of stages and decision makers are suggested, which are based on restriction of stage fluctuation, the maximum differences of alternatives and the maximum entropy theory. Furthermore, the information of alternatives is aggregated by WA operator, the alternatives are selected by their prospect values.

The comprehensive cumulative prospect values are finally aggregated by WA operator, alternatives are selected or not are judged by the sign of the comprehensive prospect theory, if the prospect value of alternative is negative, the corresponding alternative misses the group decision makers’ grey target, on the contrary, if the prospect value of alternative is positive, the corresponding alternative is dropped into the group decision makers’ grey target, the alternative with positive prospect value whose value is the maximum is selected.

Compared with the traditional decision-making methods using expected utility theory which suppose the decision makers are all completely rational, the proposed method is based on irrational which is more in line with the decision maker’s psychology. And this method considers the decision maker’s psychological expectation values about every attribute, different satisfactory grey target about attributes will directly affect decision-making result.

This study examines individual ambiguity attitudes alone and in groups by leveraging the descriptive model of anchoring and adjustment on decision-making under ambiguity. The study extends Ellsberg's probability ambiguity to outcome ambiguity and examines decisions made under both ambiguities, at different likelihood levels and under the domain of gains and losses.

The methodology selected for this study is a two-stage within-subject lab experiment, with participants from different Indian universities. Each participant made 12 lottery decisions at the individual level and at individuals in the group level.

The results show that ambiguity attitudes are not universal in nature. Ambiguity seeking as a dominant choice was observed at both the individual level and at individual in the group level. However, the magnitude of ambiguity seeking or ambiguity aversion contingent upon the domain of gains and losses differed widely across the individual level and at individuals in the group level.

The study enables to contribute toward giving a robust descriptive explanation for individual behavior in real-world applications of finance. It aims to provide direction for theoretical normative models to accommodate heterogeneity of ambiguity attitudes.

The study is novel as it examines a two-dimensional approach by representing ambiguity in probability and in outcomes. It also analyzes whether decisions under ambiguity vary when individuals make decisions alone and when they make it in groups.

Purpose – This experimental economics study using brain imaging techniques investigates the risk-ambiguity distinction in relation to the source preference hypothesis (Fox & Tversky, 1995) in which identically distributed risks arising from different sources of uncertainty may engender distinct preferences for the same decision maker, contrary to classical economic thinking. The use of brain imaging enables sharper testing of the implications of different models of decision-making including Chew and Sagi's (2008) axiomatization of source preference.

Methodology/approach – Using fMRI, brain activations were observed when subjects make 48 sequential binary choices among even-chance lotteries based on whether the trailing digits of a number of stock prices at market closing would be odd or even. Subsequently, subjects rate familiarity of the stock symbols.

Findings – When contrasting brain activation from more familiar sources with those from less familiar ones, regions appearing to be more active include the putamen, medial frontal cortex, and superior temporal gyrus. ROI analysis showed that the activation patterns in the familiar–unfamiliar and unfamiliar–familiar contrasts are similar to those in the risk–ambiguity and ambiguity–risk contrasts reported by Hsu et al. (2005). This supports the conjecture that the risk-ambiguity distinction can be subsumed by the source preference hypothesis.

Research limitations/implications – Our odd–even design has the advantage of inducing the same “unambiguous” probability of half for each subject in each binary comparison. Our finding supports the implications of the Chew–Sagi model and rejects models based on global probabilistic sophistication, including rank-dependent models derived from non-additive probabilities, e.g., Choquet expected utility and cumulative prospect theory, as well as those based on multiple priors, e.g., α-maxmin. The finding in Hsu et al. (2005) that orbitofrontal cortex lesion patients display neither ambiguity aversion nor risk aversion offers further support to the Chew–Sagi model. Our finding also supports the Levy et al. (2007) contention of a single valuation system encompassing risk and ambiguity aversion.

Originality/value of chapter – This is the first neuroimaging study of the source preference hypothesis using a design which can discriminate among decision models ranging from risk-based ones to those relying on multiple priors.