Decision Making
Modified: 2023-11-16 6:12 pm CST
People always make rational decisions, right? No, they don't. Some decisions are rational and logical but others depend more on emotion, experience, and heuristics.
Rational and Logical Decision Making
- Searching for Previously Made Decisions
- Often, others have already made a decision similar to yours and may have published it.
- Finding Relevant Information
- Library Skills and Online Skills
- You already received training in library and online skills
- Those may help you with a decision
- "How to" YouTube videos
- Real Time and Decision Making
- Time can be a factor in decision making
- Some decisions must be made in split seconds
- Other decisions may have the luxury of time
- Real Time is the time you have to make a decision
- So, decoding a message that the allies plan to invade Normandy on June 6, 1944 (D-Day) does not do any good if that message was decoded on June 9, 1944
- But, being able NOT to hit that deer in the road in your lane will not be possible if the deer is too close
- Here's the math: you are driving at 60 mph (or 88 ft/sec), it takes you 0.5 seconds to see the deer and slam on the brakes, the vehicle takes 240 feet to come to a full stop. So, it took you 284 feet to come to a stop. If the deer was any closer, you would hit it.
- Pro baseball players must make a decision about whether to swing a bat within 100 to 150 milliseconds
- What about communicating at very long distances such as from Earth to Mars? NASA states that delay could be from 4 to 24 minutes depending on how far away the two planets are at that point.
- Specific Experience
- Noisy toilet was bothering my wife. I could not fix it.
- I looked at it, figured our where the noise was coming from (the rod holding the float ball)
- I tightned screws, loosened screws, slid the rod one way and the other
- Fortunately my student Diane called about another matter. I told her the problem and she instantly solved the problem
- Turn down the water pressure
- Diane was an only child, her father was a contractor and he had taken her on his jobs from her early youth
- She knew plumbing
- So, could you?
- Change a tire?
- Cure a leaky faucet?
- Connect your computer to a new wireless network?
- Reconnect HBO Max after they say your subscription expired? (I had to do that last year!)
Logic
- Deductive Reasoning
- Drawing conclusions from premises:
- All men are mortal. Aristotle is a man. Therefore,
Aristotle is mortal.
- Conditional Reasoning uses if...then statements
- If I win the election, then I can live in the White House.
- Inductive Reasoning
- Coming to a conclusion from a series of observations
- Will the Sun rise tomorrow? Can you prove that?
- Confirmation Bias occurs when people attempt to verify
their beliefs instead of trying to falsify them
- Learning from experience, but in a very selective
fashion
- EconomicReasoning
- Lowest bidder
- Not always the best choice
- Lowest price
- Reduces decision making to one variable
- Best buy
- Combination of low price and high(er) value
- Let's buy something, how about a refrigerator? (I just bought one.)
- Measure your spaces
- opening
- depth
- buffer space
- kitchen
- doorways
- What style?
- French door
- Side by side
- Bottom freezer
- Top freezer
- Reliability
- Hard to predict (buy a warranty?)
- Brand
- Options
- Ice maker
- Water dispenser
- Finish
- Efficiency
- Noise
- Price
- My story:
- Went to local dealer, (Ivan Smith) bought French Door model from GE
- Delivered and it stuck out too much from wall in our galley kitchen
- Local dealer took it back! But, did not have any that were less deep
- Did online search (very confusing)
- Went to Little Rock and looked in person at three different big box stores
- Bought one, but delivery was in 10 days!
- Delivered from Shreveport
- Fortunately, we still had another small refrigerator that came with the house (in the pantry)
- Practical Reasoning
- "Satisficing" (Herbert Simon)
- Restricting choices to those easily available
- Not reasonable to make ideal decision
- Find your soulmate nearby, don't search the whole world
- Yes, there probably is a better marital match out there for you, statistically, but you would take too much time and effort to find him or her
Emotion and Decision Making
- Advertising uses emotion successfully
- Buy a particular car and people will like you more
- Drink an expensive whiskey and others will think you sophisticated
- Emotion raising ads
- Did you feel emotional?
Heuristical Decision Making (Kahneman & Tversky)
- It turns out that under certain conditions humans make decisions using heuristics that, “sometimes lead to severe and systematic errors.” (Tversky & Kahneman. 1974, p. 112)
- FYI, Kahneman won Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. Tversky did not win because he had already died (1996). The Nobel Foundation only awards its prizes to living people.
- Availability
- basing judgment of the frequency of events on the
ease by which then can be brought to mind.
- For example:
- doctors and nurses overestimate the community's level of sickness,
- police officers overestimate the community's level of violence, and the
- public overestimates the number of shark attacks
- Why?
- Representativeness
- basing judgment of likelihood on the degree to which
the particular instance resembles a general class.
- For
example:
- librarian, college professor, painter,
minister
- “Steve is very shy and withdrawn, invariably helpful, but with little interest in people, or in the world of reality. A meek and tidy soul, he has a need for order and structure, and a passion for detail.” (p. 1124).
- Steve is: a. farmer, b. salesman, c. airplane pilot, d. physician, e. librarian
- But, you would be wrong often
- Anchoring-Adjustment
- The "anchor" is like a first impression. Later, the
anchor is adjusted up or down as necessary. However,
anchor often exerts undue influence
- Quick!
- Estimate the product of:
- 8 x 7 x 6 x5 x 4 x 3 x2 x 1
- now estimate the product of:
- 1 x 2 x3 x 4 x 5 x 6 x 7 x 8
- Note the anchors in bold
- The average response to the first series was: 2,250
- The average response to the second series was: 512
- The answer to both is 40,320
- Should you wear nice clothes to a job interview?
How Many Decisions Do We Make Daily?
- About 35,000
- See PBS article
- That article lists six decision strategies
- Impulsiveness
- Compliance
- Delegating
- Avoidance/Deflection
- Balancing
- Prioritizing and Reflecting
- But, nearly all decisions include more than one strategy
- Note, that the first decision is actually the choice of a strategy
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