EURO 2024 Copenhagen
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371. Cognitive operations: Models that open the black box and predict our decisions

Invited abstract in session WD-11: Heuristics in BOR, stream Behavioural OR.

Wednesday, 14:30-16:00
Room: 12 (building: 116)

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Konstantinos Katsikopoulos
Southampton Business School

Abstract

Improving human behavior requires first understanding it. Can mathematical models help provide such understanding? Yes. Cognitive Operations performs a systematic examination of two main approaches to modeling human decision making: optimization and simple heuristics. The approaches are discussed by focusing on general types of decisions—under risk, under uncertainty, strategic interaction and inventory control—and by drawing on economics, psychology and artificial intelligence. Cognitive Operations is committed to supporting academics and practitioners who seek to select a modeling approach that suits the operational decision at hand. It shows how to build models and employs clear criteria for assessing them. For a model to open the black box it must specify the cognitive processes that lead to the observed decisions. To predict decisions means to fix a model in one context and to test it in another. The comparative assessment of optimization and heuristic models serves scientific pluralism and leads to surprising insights. The studies in Cognitive Operations zoom in on bounded rationality, a field pioneered by Herb Simon, who was a founder of behavioral economics, cognitive psychology as well as artificial intelligence, and sometimes also wear the hat of an operations researcher. They are useful complements to empirical, experiential and conceptual studies of behavioral operations. It is possible to open the black box and predict our decisions.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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