Real Life Decision Making

Researchers studying decision making have traditionally studied the phenomenon in the laboratory, with hypothetical decisions that may or may not involve the decision maker's values, passions, or areas of expertise. The assumption is that the findings of these well-controlled laboratory studies will shed light on the important decisions people make in their everyday lives. This book examines that assumption. The volume begins by covering four basic phases of decision making: setting or clarifying goals, gathering information, structuring the decision, and making a final choice. Comprehensive reviews of existing literature on each of these topics is provided. Next, the author examines differences in decision making as a function of several factors not typically discussed in the literature: the type of decision being made (e.g., legal, medical, moral) and the existence of individual differences in the decision maker (developmental differences, individual differences in style or temperament, differences as a function of expertise). The author then examines the topic of group decision making, contrasting it with individual decision making. The volume concludes with some observations and suggestions for improving peoples' everyday decision making. This book is intended for use as a core textbook or supplement for courses in psychology, education, or allied disciplines. It will also be an invaluable resource for people who work with people making decisions in various applied settings, such as schools, universities, and health care centers.

Have you ever experienced a decision situation that was hard to come to grips with? Did you ever feel a need to improve your decision-making skills? Is this something where you feel that you have not learned enough practical and useful methods? In that case, you are not alone! Even though decision-making is both considered and actually also is a very important skill in modern work-life as well as in private life, these skills are not to any reasonable extent taught in schools at any level. No wonder many people do indeed feel the need to improve but have a hard time finding out how. This book is an attempt to remedy this shortcoming of our educational systems and possibly also of our common, partly intuition-based, decision culture. Intuition is not at all bad, quite the contrary, but it has to co-exist with rationality. We will show you how. Methods for decision-making should be of prime concern to any individual or organisation, even if the decision processes are not always explicitly or even consciously formulated. All kinds of organisations, as well as individuals, must continuously make decisions of the most varied nature in order to prosper and attain their objectives. A large part of the time spent in any organisation, not least at management levels, is spent gathering, processing, and compiling information for the purpose of making decisions supported by that information. The same interest has hitherto not been shown for individual decision-making, even though large gains would also be obtained at a personal level if important personal decisions were better deliberated. This book aims at changing that and thus attends to both categories of decision-makers. This book will take you through a journey starting with some history of decision-making and analysis and then go through easy-to-learn ways of structuring decision information and methods for analysing the decision situations, beginning with simple decision situations and then moving on to progressively harder ones, but never losing sight of the overarching goal that the reader should be able to follow the progression and being able to carry out similar decision analyses in real-life situations. The Open Access version of this book, available at http: //www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license. Funded by Stockholm University DSV

Interest in the role that decision making plays in adolescents' involvement in high-risk behaviors led the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to request the Board on Children, Youth, and Families to convene a workshop on adolescent decision making. The Board on Children, Youth, and Families is a joint activity of the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine. A workshop was held on January 6-7, 1998, to examine what is known about adolescents' decision-making skills and the implications of that knowledge for programs to further their healthy development.

Judgment, Decision-Making, and Embodied Choices introduces a new concept of embodied choices which take sensorimotor experiences into account when limited time and resources forces a person to make a quick decision. This book combines areas of cognitive psychology and movement science, presenting an integrative approach to understanding human functioning in everyday scenarios. This is the first book focusing on the role of the gut as a second brain, introducing the link to risky behavior. The book's author engages readers by providing real-life experiences and scenarios connecting theory to practice. Discusses the role of gut feelings and the brain-gut behavior connection Demonstrates that behavior influences decision and other people’s perceptions about mood or character Includes research on medical decisions and shopping decisions Illustrates how to train embodied choices

Statistical illiteracy can have an enormously negative impact on decision making. This volume of collected papers brings together applied and theoretical research on risks and decision making across the fields of medicine, psychology, and economics. Collectively, the essays demonstrate why the frame in which statistics are communicated is essential for broader understanding and sound decision making, and that understanding risks and uncertainty has wide-reaching implications for daily life. Gerd Gigerenzer provides a lucid review and catalog of concrete instances of heuristics, or rules of thumb, that people and animals rely on to make decisions under uncertainty, explaining why these are very often more rational than probability models. After a critical look at behavioral theories that do not model actual psychological processes, the book concludes with a call for a heuristic revolution that will enable us to understand the ecological rationality of both statistics and heuristics, and bring a dose of sanity to the study of rationality.

Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.

There are basically two categories of books on decision-making. One tells stories of how intuition guides decision-making. The other delineates a formal approach, based on decision-trees or matrices, often impenetrable to real-life decision makers. This book combines the best elements of both perspectives in a way that can be easily understood by all who are struggling with complex decisions, either as individuals or as organisations. It demonstrates how intuition and psychological insights can be harnessed to design relevant models and decision strategies, and describes how goals can be adequately formed and operationalised. Finally, the book integrates these processes in an analytical framework for decision-making.

Have you ever experienced a decision situation that was hard to come to grips with? Did you ever feel a need to improve your decision-making skills? Is this something where you feel that you have not learned enough practical and useful methods? In that case, you are not alone! Even though decision-making is both considered and actually is a very important skill in modern work-life as well as in private life, these skills are not to any reasonable extent taught in schools at any level. No wonder many people do indeed feel the need to improve but have a hard time finding out how. This book is an attempt to remedy this shortcoming of our educational systems and possibly also of our common, partly intuition-based, decision culture. Intuition is not at all bad, quite the contrary, but it has to co-exist with rationality. We will show you how. Methods for decision-making should be of prime concern to any individual or organisation, even if the decision processes are not always explicitly or even consciously formulated. All kinds of organisations, as well as individuals, must continuously make decisions of the most varied nature in order to prosper and attain their objectives. A large part of the time spent in any organisation, not least at management levels, is spent gathering, processing, and compiling information for the purpose of making decisions supported by that information. The same interest has hitherto not been shown for individual decision-making, even though large gains would also be obtained at a personal level if important personal decisions were better deliberated. This book aims at changing that and thus attends to both categories of decision-makers. This book will take you through a journey starting with some history of decision-making and analysis and then go through easy-to-learn ways of structuring decision information and methods for analysing the decision situations, beginning with simple decision situations and then moving on to progressively harder ones, but never losing sight of the overarching goal that the reader should be able to follow the progression and being able to carry out similar decision analyses in real-life situations. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.