Short Paper- BBC Documentary Critique Richa Lodhi MGT 7400 December 4, 2017 Table of Contents 1) BBC Documentary Critique------------------------------------------------------------------ 3 2) Summary------ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7 3) References---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8 BBC Documentary Critique The BBC Documentary is about how human beings actually make decisions and how cognitive biases affect their decision-making ability. Decision making is an important part of one’s life. There is a battle between intuition and logic when one makes a decision. The battle goes on when one makes a small decision like what to eat to when one makes a big decision about whom to marry. One makes between 2000-10,000 decisions in a day. The Documentary introduces one to the scholarly work of Professor Danny Kahneman from the Princeton University who has been researching the field of decision-making for the last 40 years. Professor Kahneman uses puzzles to understand the decision-making process. He says that the puzzle of the New York cab drivers can give an insight into how cognitive biases affect our decision- making ability. He says that logically the cab drivers should spend more time working on a rainy day than on a sunny day if
The decision making process includes cognitive processes that eventually lead to a choice in action while taking into consideration the alternative possibilities (Allen, Dorozenko, & Roberts, 2016). Not all choices have to lead to an action. The values and preferences of the person making the choice also comes into play when making the final decision. Problem-solving to obtain a certain goal or satisfactory by a solution is the main reason people go through the decision making process (Stefaniak, & Tracey, 2014). This process has many factors that end with one final result or solution. The decisions made can be rational or irrational and can be determined by explicit or tacit knowledge (Qingyao, Dongyu, & Weihua, 2016). Since the decision making process can be very difficult at time, psychologists have viewed the process in different perspectives to get a better understanding (Rossi, Picchi, Di Stefano, Marongiu, & Scarsini, 2015). The different perspectives include; psychological, cognitive, and normative or communicative rationality.
For the most part, our decision-making processes are either sub-conscious or made fairly quickly due to the nature of the decision before us. Most of us don't spend much time deciding what to have for lunch, what to wear, or what to watch on television. For other, more complex decisions, we need to spend more time and analyze the elements of the decision and potential consequences. To assist with this, many people employ the use of a decision-making model. Utilizing a
Decisions are what direct a average person's life. Some decisions are easy some are hard. But that’s the way of life and how it works.
The documentary “Fed Up” provides some important and disturbing details of the food industry. The 1977 heart disease and diet study known as the McGovern Report warned that the obesity rate was increasing rapidly due to American diets in fatty meats, saturated fats, cholesterol, and sugar. The food industry vehemently denied these claims, but the American people still demanded lower fat food products. The food manufacturers found that the fat removal made the food bland and unpalatable so to address this they replaced the fat content with sugar. Both the documentary and the Harvard Nutrition Source discuss the role sugar has in health conditions such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. They both link the consumption of sugar as the causality for
In Chapter 3, there were 12 areas of bias spread across the 3 areas of heuristics. The main theme of the text was to prove that we are predisposed to certain outcomes. As we make important decisions we rely on our memory, or a number of past events, or even ignoring facts. Overall, we are biased in many ways when it comes to making decisions, or predicting outcomes of a particular event.
Our understanding of why flawed decisions are so common comes from work done by neuroscientists and decision scientists to understand how the brain works when faced with a set of circumstances that require a decision (Finkelstein, S., Whitehead, J., & Campbell, A. (2009).
When humans make a decision, it often turns out to be “predictably irrational” (Ariely, 2009). They always deviate systematically from expected decision rather show an inclination towards a certain way of thinking. This consistency of behavioral or decision bias can be very helpful to identify consequences or outcomes in a different
In today’s economy, decision-making skills vary for each household; however, the bottom-line goal for every individual is to get the most for their money. In order to do this, there are 4 principles of individual decision-making: facing trade-offs, evaluating what one is giving up to obtain their goal, thinking at the margin, and responding to incentives.
Almost everyone uses decision-making on a daily basis. The ability to make decisions is significant because possible outcomes can outweigh losses depending on the decision you choose to make. Decision-making helps to solve everyday problems, but has also been beneficial to solving several scientific issues like Bechera, Damasio, Damasio, and Anderson (1994) did in their study of the Iowa Gambling Task. There were a total of 50 participants in their study, where 44 men and women were from a normal control group and 6 men and women were E.V.R subjects. The subjects are told to select a card from four decks until they are told to stop. The subjects receive money depending on the deck they choose from. After so many turns and receiving money, they
This week’s reading Predictably Irrational was very valuable, and informative. While coming up with so many ways of thinking when it comes to behavior, I had no idea even existed. We talked last week about being rational, but this week and this week’s reading it discussed more about irrational, and predictable behavior. At the end of this summary I hope to have showed and understand the difference when it comes to irrational and predictable theories that can disrupt behavior, and decision making.
Chapter six “Perception and Individual Decision Making” I learned about the many different experiments of perception. “The ability to see, hear, or become aware of something through the senses, the normal limits to human perception” (Oxford University Press, 2015)
Making decisions is no easy feat, especially when it comes to choices that have the ability to change the direction of one's life. Decisions like choosing what college to go to and what career path to head down are often encouraged to be deliberated as far as years in advance, solidifying the common belief that the more educated the decision, the better it is. English Canadian author Malcolm Gladwell challenges this notion by arguing that snap decisions made by the adaptive unconsciousness have the ability to be controlled and utilized to to become equally as powerful as conscious choices can be. Gladwell executes this message through a well written introduction split up into three parts; the first providing an extended example, the second
Decision-making can be a cognitive process of selecting a course of action form various options. Some of us are logical. Some of us are risk taking. Either way such characteristics play a role in our decisions. In my experience decision-making can
This distinctive book called, “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, is one of very few exquisite readings I’ve completed so far. Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist in Princeton University, and due to his research, he won a Nobel Prize in 2002 in economics. In the beginning of his book, he speaks of our cognitive System 1 and System 2 ways of thinking. System 1 generates feelings, impressions, and memory. It is very instinctive, automatic, and is considered quick thinking. System 2 on the other hand, is alert during complex problem solving, while dealing with facts and knowledge, and is attentive while working with difficult calculations. For example, a problem such as 24 x 13, this takes more time and knowledge to figure out (System 2), rather then recognizing an emotion from face expressions (System 1). When System 1 is strained, your System 2 steps in to help you process through that specific instant. Now aside from the psychological portion of this book, Mr. Kahneman divulges about a consolidated economic analysis with elemental intuitions from the psychological perspective; such as, luck and skill, overconfidence, risks in the stock market, factors of success and the decision making process. This book is overall concluded with the understanding of behavioral economics, which is the social and cognitive components on economic decisions that are defined by individuals and have consequences that reflect from making those decisions and taking those risks.
The importance of decision making in individual daily life and in organization level was demonstrated by two scientists, Arkes and Hammond (1992), in ‘Judgment and Decision making’ indentified the four types of information which decision maker requires constructing a decision tree.