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Personal Control in Action pp 279–298Cite as

Decision Making and Action

The Search for a Dominance Structure

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Part of the book series: The Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology ((SSSC))

Abstract

There is a close link between decision making and action. By making a decision a person commits herself to act in a certain way. However, in behavioral decision research, the link between decision making and action is largely neglected. The reason may be that decision making primarily is seen as a question of forming preferences, i.e., a question of finding the better or best alternative. However, in contrast to decisions preferences are not necessarily linked to actions. An individual may prefer alternative x to alternative y without committing herself to any action. That is, the alternatives in preferences need not be action alternatives (e.g., preferences among articles of consumption), which always is true in a decision situation (e.g., in decisions to buy an article of consumption).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, S-10691, Stockholm, Sweden

    Henry Montgomery

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  1. Henry Montgomery
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw, 00-183, Warsaw, Poland

    Miroslaw Kofta  & Grzegorz Sedek  & 

  2. Department of Psychology, The Ohio State University, 43210, Columbus, Ohio, USA

    Gifford Weary

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Montgomery, H. (1998). Decision Making and Action. In: Kofta, M., Weary, G., Sedek, G. (eds) Personal Control in Action. The Springer Series in Social Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2901-6_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2901-6_11

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4419-3285-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4757-2901-6

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