Decision Making

How do you make decisions

Pick a decision that you made recently and that has had important consequences for you. It may be your decision about which college to attend, which major to select, whether to take a part-time job, or which part-time job to take. Using the lessons you have learned this week, analyse the way in which way you made the decision. In particular, address the following questions:

1. Which criteria did you use, either consciously or unconsciously, to guide your decisions?
2. What alternatives did you list? Did you ignore some important alternatives?
3. How much information did you have about each alternative?
4. Were you making the decision on the basis of complete or incomplete information?
5. How did you reach your decision?
6. Did you sit down and consciously think through the implications of each alternative, or did you make the decision on the basis of intuition?
7. Did you use any rules of thumb to help you make the decision?
   In retrospect, do you think that your choice of alternative was shaped by any of the cognitive biases discussed in this week’s lesson?

Pick a decision that you made recently and that has had important consequences for you. It may be your decision about which college to attend, which major to select, whether to take a part-time job, or which part-time job to take. Using the lessons you have learned this week, analyse the way in which way you made the decision. In particular, address the following questions:

1. Which criteria did you use, either consciously or unconsciously, to guide your decisions?
2. What alternatives did you list? Did you ignore some important alternatives?
3. How much information did you have about each alternative?
4. Were you making the decision on the basis of complete or incomplete information?
5. How did you reach your decision?
6. Did you sit down and consciously think through the implications of each alternative, or did you make the decision on the basis of intuition?
7. Did you use any rules of thumb to help you make the decision?
   In retrospect, do you think that your choice of alternative was shaped by any of the cognitive biases discussed in this week’s lesson?