ABSTRACT
Michael Jordan, elected sportsman of the century and member of the Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, achieved in 1,072 games 32,292 points (roughly 30.1 points per game). This record holds as the highest scoring career average in basketball. Each of the individual decisions to pass or shoot to achieve such impressive records is based on multiple factors. In this chapter we are mainly interested in the decision-making part of the process. Other psychological factors (see Chapters 5–9) and non-psychological factors, such as physical or anthropometric aspects of expert performance, are discussed elsewhere in this book (see Chapter 15). Within the decision-making and judgment literature, choices have been discussed for many tasks, sports, and people. Here we will scope our review on two groups of people (athletes and referees) and short-term choices that relate to direct sensorimotor interaction with the environment (or in the lab). For a larger overview of choices beyond referees and athletes, such as spectators, coaches, and managers, or of choices on long-term dimensions such as career transitions, we refer to overviews (e.g., Bar-Eli et al., 2011). Further, we refrain from reporting on methodological and training aspects of decision-making, but rather focus on decision-making as an important characteristic of expert performance. So how do experts make decisions or choices between options?
