Dynamic Decision Making

Most real-life decisions occur in multiple stages— individuals experience a series of actions and their consequences over time. Medical decision making, in particular, often involves anticipating uncertain future consequences where subsequent decisions are contingent on (or constrained by) the outcomes of patients' earlier choices. There has been a great deal of research on the basic principles underlying single-stage decision making but very little work on multistage decisions. Decision field theory has begun to examine many of the principles underlying multistage decision making and could be used to inform real-life choices involving both uncertainty and multiple stages.