Decision MakingMarian Crofts

Decision making is a process that chooses a preferred option (or a course of actions) from among a set of alternatives on the basis of given criteria or strategies.

Definition

I. Past Experience● Avoid past mistakes● Repeat good choices

II. Social Pressure● People tend to agree

(or conform) with their peers.

Factors Influencing Decisions

III. Individual Differences● Research has indicated that age, socioeconomic status (SES), and

cognitive abilities influences decision making ● People in lower SES groups may have less access to education and

resources, which may make them more susceptible to experiencing negative life events, often beyond their control; as a result, low SES individuals may make poorer decisions, based on past decisions.

IV. Personal Relevance● When people believe what they decide matters, they are more likely to

make a decision.● Based on voting patterns, people will vote more readily when they

believe their opinion is indicative of the attitudes of the general population, as well as when they have a regard for their own importance in the outcomes. People vote when they believe their vote counts.

Thinking patterns based on generalizations that may lead to memory errors, inaccurate judgments, and faulty logic ● Belief bias: over dependence on prior knowledge in arriving at decisions● Hindsight bias: people tend to readily explain an event as inevitable,

once it has happened● Omission bias: generally, people have a propensity to omit information

perceived as risky● Confirmation bias: people observe what they expect in observations

(Horoscopes!)

V. Cognitive Biases

● General decision making strategies people use that are based on little information, yet very often correct;

● Mental shortcuts that reduce the cognitive burden associated with decision making .

● Reduce work in decision making in several ways. Heuristics offer the user the ability to scrutinize few signals and/or alternative choices in decision making.

The price heuristic: in which people judge higher priced items to have higher quality than lower priced things, is specific to consumer patternsThe representative heuristic: In the event that one of two things is recognizable, people will tend to choose the recognized thing; utilizing or arriving at a decision with the least amount of effort or information.

VI. Heuristics

Decisions and reasoning are heavily biased by human emotions. Emotional input provides motivation and meaning to our decisions.

Consider patient Elliot...

Neurobiology of Decision Making

“Previously a successful businessman, Elliott underwent neurosurgery for a tumor and lost a part of his brain—the orbitofrontal cortex—that connects the frontal lobes with the emotions. He became a real life Mr. Spock, devoid of emotion. But rather than this making him perfectly rational, he became paralyzed by every decision in life.”-Christian Jarrett, Thirty Second Brain

1960 Presidential Debate

Nixon, pale and underweight from a recent hospitalization, appeared sickly and sweaty, while Kennedy appeared calm and confident.

Faces in Politics

“Psychologists John Antonakis and Olaf Dalgas suggested that, when we judge a candidate as more or less competent, we do it in the same way that children do. They first asked a group of adults to rate pairs of faces, taken from the 2002 French parliamentary elections, based on how capable they seemed. When they compared the ratings to actual election results, the correspondence was seventy-two per cent. The ratings even predicted the margin of victory; the more competently-rated the face, the higher the margin. The researchers then had a group of children play a computer game, simulating a boat trip from Troy to Ithaca, in which they had to choose a captain for the voyage; their options consisted of the same 2002 election candidates. The two sets of responses were indistinguishable from each other: seventy-one per cent of the time, the children picked the election winner to pilot the boat.”-Maria Konikova

The Facial Structure of Competence

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Using computer analysis, we can see that our rankings of faces came down to two principal components: trustworthiness and dominance. The first tells us whether to approach or avoid someone, while the second indicates if that person is physically strong or weak—and it is also the trait most closely tied to the appearance of competence.

“Todorov showed pairs of portraits to roughly a thousand people, and asked them to rate the competence of each person. Unbeknownst to the test subjects, they were looking at candidates for the House and Senate in 2000, 2002, and 2004. In study after study, participants’ responses to the question of whether someone looked competent predicted actual election outcomes at a rate much higher than chance—from sixty-six to seventy-three per cent of the time. Even looking at the faces for as little as one second, Todorov found, yielded the exact same result: a snap judgment that generally identified the . winners and losers. Todorov . concluded that when we make .. what we think of as well-.. reasoned voting decisions, we .. are actually driven in part by .. our initial,instinctive

reactions to candidates.”-Maria Konikova

As researchers expected, subjects preferred the image of the candidate morphed with their own picture. They didn’t recognize their own faces, but on some level they recognized something familiar and similar to themselves. And in politics, it seems, familiarity breeds attraction. After all, who’s more competent and trustworthy than you?” - Libby Copeland

“In a 2008 study, Stanford University actually morphed images of unfamiliar political candidates with pictures of their lab subjects, unbeknownst to their subjects. The effect was subtle, maintaining the basic look of the candidate, with just a hint of the subject’s face superimposed on it.

Roosevelt knew that his face could command respect. But add a wheelchair, or the image of him being carried off in the arms of an aide, and the vision of competence would have been undermined.

Election Strategies

http://tlab.princeton.edu/demonstrations/

● http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/180/decision-making-factors-that-influence-decision-making-heuristics-used-and-decision-outcomes

● http://www.wired.com/2014/03/neuroscience-decision-making-explained-30-seconds/● http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/on-the-face-of-it-the-psychology-of-electability● http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/01/mitt_romney_vs_newt_gingrich_h

ow_much_do_looks_matter_in_presidential_politics_.html● http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/a-facial-theory-of-politics.html?_r=0● http://ouradopt.com/adoption-blog/jan-2009/angelaw/encouraging-emotional-decision-

making● http://intentionalworkplace.com/2012/03/15/how-emotion-shapes-decision-making/

Sources