Heads and Hearts: Three Methods for Explicating Judgment and Decision Processes

Agent-based models are more likely to generate accurate outputs if they incorporate valid representations of human agents than if they don't. The present article outlines three research methodologies commonly used for explicating the cognitive processes and motivational orientations of human judgment and decision making: policy capturing, information seeking, and social choice. Examples are given to demonstrate how each methodology might be employed to supplement more traditional qualitative methods such as interviews and content analyses. Suggestions for encoding results of the three methodologies in agent-based models are also given, as are caveats about methodological practicalities.