Biases And Psychological Traps Of Intuitive Decision Making

Information bias is a type of cognitive bias that describes the tendency to seek information when it does not affect action. People can often make better predictions or choices with less information: more information is not always better. An example of information bias is believing that the more information that can be acquired to make a decision, the better, even if that extra information is irrelevant for the decision. I find myself always trying to collect the most information possible and a majority of the time it is irrelevant to the final decision. One specific example of me using information bias, is when I was trying to decide which cough medication I should purchase. I read all the bottles and googled which product other people had like, but when it came down to finally making the decision I bought the cheapest one. All the research and reading were for nothing because ultimately, I didn’t use the knowledge to make the decision.

I think one of the weaknesses that I have when it comes to trusting and believing in my intuition is that not all the time do I select the right answer or the right way of doing something. Sometimes rethinking may be required for me and in a few instances, I have had to rethink a couple of things because my intuition didn’t always pay off. Sometimes something can be so easy to do or to plan for that it’s not about intuition or anything else expect to do

Personal decision making is influenced by a range of biases, many of which we are unconscious of. Being more aware of these biases reveals how individual decision making can be improved. (Reference…)

On a more scientific level, in both the lectures pertaining to the “Emotion and Motivation” and the textbook readings pertaining to “Decision-Making”, we saw the numerous benefits of making decisions on the basis of emotions. Research suggested that we make less intransitive decisions when relying on emotions, and similarly we tend to make riskier decisions when not relying on our emotions as we become insensitive to future consequences. Keeping this in mind, what are we truly sacrificing when we decide to make decisions upon the reasoning advocated in the reading over our

How many times have we heard the saying “follow your heart” or people following their “guts” when making a decision? Soldiers in time of war are successfully recorded to use their instincts or “guts”, while engaged in life-threatening situations, in order to minimize life loss. A mom, “instinctively” knows when her child is feeling discomfort, without much need for words. Consecutively, expert chess players can predict how a game will end, by the mere look at pictures of a game. However, news reports in the States show policemen wrongfully shooting down suspects, while making snap judgments; more so, a tendency in judging the right job applicant, regardless of

All humans are flawed in that their brains immediately want to come to one conclusion or another and can subconsciously lead themselves to a conclusion even when attempting to reduce cognitive and perceptual biases. To combat this, there will be the need to implement checks and balances on the human brain in order to ensure that there are few or no biases being reached by the brain. Much of this can be done by exercising some of the tactics of checks and balances as highlighted by readings this week. A simple concept, it states; that in respect to the outcome of an analysis, if the opposite outcome was reached would I, the analyst be surprised by that outcome? This is an interesting method to check the human brain and ensure that a thought provoking and rational decision is reached. The perception of a situation by the human mind is something that is more fragile the longer the mind is exposed to that perception. As it is based on the expectation of what the situation is, it is difficult to stop the mind from creating a picture of

“Cognitive dissonance plays a key role in people’s behavior when choosing between alternatives, because the selection of an alternative is based in the fact it is more desirable” (Alvarado, Ramirez, 2014). Humans are often faced with the challenge of choosing between two alternatives, and are often faced with discomfort or regret afterwards. When faced with this regret, people often try to justify or rationalize the decision they made, wanting to reduce this feeling of dissonance. “No matter how smart they are, people who are in the midst of reducing dissonance are so involved with convincing themselves that they are right that they frequently end up behaving irrationally and maladaptively (Aronson, Wilson, Akert, & Sommers, 2016). People do not like to admit they are

Myriad decisions affront us every day. Each decision is decomposable into sub-decisions. For instance, consider the mental turmoil or apathy required to determine whether you shall go grocery shopping. First, you determine an initial need for grocery shopping (i.e., you are out of milk, eggs, etc.). Next, you consider what you would rather (an evaluation of utility) do. This cost-benefit analysis continues until going seems to bring greater utility or until staying does. Though these calculations require a second or so in your mind, in decomposing this choice, one finds a series of individual decisions contributing to the final. These subdecisions may “How much is milk worth my going to the store?” or “How much does this television show dissuade me from going to the store?” However, one can go deeper still. In answering each of the above subquestions, you subconsciously evaluate the options on a scale of utility. Consider this concept, though: for any arbitrarily selected value on that scale, you must subconsciously “decide” if the value is satisfactory--a boolean decision (see Fig. 1). Additionally, all but the lowest layer of subdecisions are considerable as independent decisions in different contexts. Accordingly, these decisions are likewise decomposable to final boolean decisions, assuming all high level “decisions” are decomposable. Also note these boolean decisions are never consciously considered in first order as that requires additional levels of

The human mind is a fascinating thing, doing more work then we can possibly imagine and much more than we ever think about. The conscious part of the mind that controls our decision making abilities is itself controlled by many forms of biases operating both in the conscious and unconscious parts of the mind , many of which we never realize are even there. These decision affecting biases can be the difference between making a wise decision and a bad one. One such instance this holds true for is when deciding rather it’s time to give an employee a raise or not.

The intuition model is about how we see people and what we think of them based on our first impression. The studies that have been based on this model look at the central and peripheral traits and at the primacy and recency effects.

Difficulty of coming to a conclusion of choice between the occurrence of multiple options is demonstrated

CSGC required reading “Problem Solving and Psychological Traps” illustrates how cognitive biases influence and affect decisions through psychological factors, paradigms and facts and assumptions in which ultimately affect how an individual makes a decision. Therefore, hidden psychological traps significantly impact leaders’ decision-making processes. Psychological factors termed heuristics are a mental shortcut based on past experiences for making decisions; sometimes even referred to as common sense or an easy way to solve problems. Cognitive biases are likely to affect how and why leaders will make their decisions. If leaders do not surround themselves with an effective staff (i.e. team) who can identify and communicate the cognitive biases that exist within one’s own framework,

These three human decision-making patterns combine to generate what Tversky and Kahneman called the framing effect: the phenomenon whereby human decision-making is impacted based on whether

Chapter five in the book “Judgment in Managerial Decision Making” Max. H Bazerman and Don A. Moore is titled Framing the Reversal of Preference. This chapter explains how framing or alternating of a problem can defer one’s decision making process. In a written form of questions, the words may be manipulated by a certain frame effect that influences a person’s decision or answer to the question. Reversal of preference is a theory that people change their mind or preference when the decision involves more than one variable. When the decision is surrounded by similar suggested outcomes the mind can then decide on what information is most important. Framing is part of the reversal of preference by affecting one’s judgment and placing influence on the final decision.

Myriad decisions affront us every day. Each decision is decomposable into sub-decisions. For instance, consider the mental turmoil (or apathy) required to determine whether you shall go grocery shopping. First, you determine an initial need for grocery shopping (i.e., you are out of milk, eggs, etc.). Next, you consider what you would rather do--an evaluation of utility. This cost-benefit analysis continues until shopping or staying is perceived with marginally greater utility. Though these calculations require a second or so in your mind, in decomposing this choice, one finds a series of individual decisions contributing to the final. These sub-decisions may “How much is milk worth my going to the store?” or “How much does this television show dissuade me from going to the store?” However, one can go deeper still. In answering each of the above sub-questions, you subconsciously evaluate the options on a scale of utility. Consider this concept though: for any arbitrarily selected value on that scale, you must subconsciously “decide” if the value is satisfactory—a boolean decision (see Fig. 1). Additionally, all but the lowest layer of sub-decisions are considerable as independent decisions in different contexts. Accordingly, these decisions are likewise decomposable to final boolean decisions, assuming all high level “decisions” are decomposable. Also note these boolean decisions are never consciously considered in first order as that requires additional levels