The DmEp Center at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev is an interdisciplinary endeavor devoted to research and teaching of normative, descriptive, and prescriptive theories of judgment, decision-making, and economic psychology. This field of study draws on cognitive and social psychology, economics, sociology, statistics, and other disciplines to understand how individuals and groups construct judgments and make decisions in a variety of domains.

Researchers at the Center study the processes by which intuition, reasoning, emotion, and social influence produce beliefs, attitudes, judgments, and choices. These topics have important applications in a range of contexts, including management, medicine, marketing, business, finance, and public policy. By understanding the processes through which people make decisions and formulate judgments, and by developing computerized decision aids, it is possible to eventually help individuals as well as organizations to make better decisions. Well thought out decisions are likely to better serve decision-makers in achieving goals in diverse areas, from the management of potentially hazardous technologies, to the fuller involvement of patients in medical choices.  The center has a wide interdisciplinary membership, including psychologists and economists, as well as experts in business administration, marketing and consumer behavior. 

The importance of studying judgment and decision-making, and particularly behavioral decision-making, has been recently recognized by the Nobel Prize committee in its choice of Professor Daniel Kahneman as Nobel  Laureate in Economics. Professor Kahneman’s work, in collaboration with Amos Tversky, has changed our thinking on human decision-making and opened a new field of inquiry that focuses on the way people think about their choices.