Every day of our lives, we are usually faced with making decisions, from what to wear, what to eat, what time to set out, and so on. Sometimes we perform some acts so fast that it wouldn’t occur to us that we have just made a decision. As social creatures, oftentimes, context rather than personality plays a big role in our decisions.
This then leads us to ask the question “What is a decision”?
What is a Decision?
A decision can be defined as the act or process of determining or making a judgment. A decision sometimes can be intuitive, which is known as the system 1 decision. In this case, the person in question does not have the time to process the possible options and just goes ahead with their default instinct. Another form of decision which is referred to as the system 2 decision is a form of decision making that requires actual effort being put into dissecting and evaluating several factors before a decision is made.
Our intuition, experiences, information available to us and other societal factors have a huge influence on how we make decisions. For example, a person or group of people who have been trained on fire drills and how to coordinate themselves in the case of a fire incident in a building. In the case of an occurrence of a fire outbreak in the building, this group of people will tend to behave differently from another set of people who have had no prior training or experience on what to do in the case of such occurrences. The first group will make decisions based on information available to them which will have them behaving according to laid out instructions while the other set will act intuitively and probably just want to find any means of escape they deem fit.
Are we aware of our decision-making process?
it’s worth asking why we can’t simply educate ourselves out of this by becoming more aware of our decision-making process. Why does this ignorance persist?
The problem is: we don’t have access to mental processes generating decisions and behaviour. We can’t see what’s going on in our heads when we vote for parole, don’t check a box, and so on.
We can’t monitor what makes us act as we do. There is no window on the processes underlying our judgments and behaviour.
Biases
Bias is an important factor to note while making decisions. Biases in how we think can be major obstacles in any decision-making process. Biases distort and disrupt objective contemplation of an issue by introducing influences into the decision-making process that are separate from the decision itself. We are usually unaware of the biases that can affect our judgment. The most common cognitive biases are confirmation, anchoring, halo effect, and overconfidence.
Over the coming series, we will be taking an in-depth look at each of these biases and how they influence our decision-making processes.
MIND YOUR BUSYNESS