Decision-Making the Role of Experience in Decisions

Decision-Making

The Role of Experience in Decisions

Ever find yourself fretting over the results of a decision, which with hindsight was the wrong one? Well fret not, cognitive scientists have been investigating common missteps in the decision making process for decades and providing interesting insights. This field of research has become divided into two main areas; decision errors associated with thinking too little or too much. Whether these errors are a reflection of the actual neurological correlates underlying the decision-making process is unknown, but this division does seem to represent differences in cognitive processes. However, Ariely and Norton (2011) argue that this distinction may be less a reflection of cognitive divisions than an artifact of research study design, and that a continuum of decision-making may be a more accurate intellectual framework for understanding these findings.

The Role of Experience

Ariely and Norton (2011) describe decision-making from several different perspectives. They first discuss findings from research investigating 'thinking too little', which has exposed errors predominantly related to acting out of habit. Habitual decisions are then broken down into two categories, habits that perpetuate negative outcomes, such as mindless eating when watching television, and habits that have lost their meaning over time, such as continuing to drive miles out of the way to purchase gasoline where it used to be cheaper.

Second, they discuss research findings that reveal under what conditions 'thinking too much' may produce a negative outcome (Ariely and Norton, 2011). Examples include being faced with so many parameters that accurate weighting of the contributing factors is undermined, or even to the point of becoming paralyzed. Bad choices can also be made if a person feels the need to justify a choice. In addition, someone can become so involved in the decision-making process that the goal of an optimal choice (experienced utility) gets lost in the need to feel good about the decision (decision utility).

In an attempt to bring these two disparate fields of research together, into a continuum of decision-making, Ariely and Norton (2011) suggest optimal decisions depend on the kind of decision being made and why. For example, financial decisions can often benefit from laying out all the choices and using math to help with the decision-making process. This example suggests thinking too much is unlikely to produce a negative outcome. In contrast, split-second personality trait judgments tend to be accurate unless the trait being considered cannot be assessed except over time. For example, an energetic person can usually be identified quickly, but not whether someone is agreeable or not.