Psychology

Decision making is a process of purposeful selection of a given objective among a set of alternatives. Decision making has an implication that there are there exists alternative choices to be considered and aimed at identifying only one that has best fits, our  desires, goals, lifestyles, values, just to mention a few and also has the highest probability of effectiveness or success. Decision making is not a separate function of management but as a function, it is intertwined with other management practices such as coordination, planning and controlling. Boone  Kurtz (1999) state that decisions are made on daily basis by both individuals and groups to help solve problems and deal with some situations in personal life, at work place, in businesses among other various places. The process therefore involves recognizing or identifying an opportunity or a problem and finding appropriate solution to it. The process should be targeted at sufficiently reducing doubts and uncertainties in order to come up with a reasonable choice. It is important to note that decision making process reduces uncertainties or errors rather than totally eliminating them, hence giving way for every decision made involving some levels of risk as it is not possible to have a complete knowledge concerning all alternatives.

There are different kinds of decisions that one can make, they include decisions which, that involve a choice a choice of one or more alternatives from among a set of possibilities. Here the choice picked is based on how well each alternative measures up to a set of predefined criteria. Decisions whether is another kind, it is eitheror, yesno decision that have to be made before proceeding with an alternative selection. They are made by weighing the pros and con of reasons.  Contingent decisions are those ones which have been made and put on hold until some condition(s) is made. Multiple entities or members can come up to make to make group decision(s) that is composed of two different sessions free discussion where the problem is simply placed on a table for members to discuss and developmental or structured discussion. It involves breaking the problem into steps and smaller parts of specific goals hence ensuring systematic topic coverage and encouraging all members participation in discussion of the same problem aspect at the same time. It has advantages like more inputs leads to more possible solutions being generated and shared responsibility for the decisions and the outcomes. However it also has disadvantages such as taking too long time to reach a common ground and also sometimes the members have to compromise for consensus to be reached (Caroline, Zsambok  Gary, 2004).  

Decision making process is bound to have errors. The errors in decision making process are as a result of biases that tend to deviate judgment that happens in particular situations cognitive biases are instances of evolved mental behavior which may that occur may be because they enable faster decision making or they lead to more effective actions. Some errors come about due to lack of appropriate mechanisms to solve problems or misapplication of mechanisms to be applied under different mechanisms. Errors have to be minimized in decision making because they are costly for decisions shape vital outcome s for individuals, families and society at large (Clancy  Shulman, 1994). The errors may make companies make wrong decisions to hire wrong employees they may make individuals marry wrong partners, engage in needless conflicts and many more things that happen in our lives.

According to Derek  Nigel (2004), the first type of decision making errors is the confirmation bias which occurs when a person focuses on things that heshe often sees even if they are less prevalent.  One might take it that airplanes are much less dangerous simply because heshe has come across cars ,and has seen more car accidents for instance than airplanes. It happens that one will also focus more on information that supports hisher current view or opinion for that matter.

Another type of error is one that suggests that happiness is relative.  It is common knowledge that man is a competitive animal leading to the urge or feeling to know what people who are around us have or are getting even if we dont want what they have.  We compete as much as it doesnt help in building strong relationships.
The endowment effect is the other error where by a person wants things heshe doesnt need if another person has them. At the same time heshe has problems getting rid of things heshe doesnt need. People tend to value things owned more that things they dont.

The hindsight bias also affects decision making in that past events are given higher probability than they actually had. When an event has happened it is given a high probability that it will happen again even if it is a rare one.

Another error associated with decision making is the recency effect where a person places value on events that have happened recently. It also happens that with time this value diminishes.

Berry (1993) asserts that sensory override as a decision making error works in a way that as senses affect what we think about something, brand images can affect our tastes considering our brains are associative  such that one thing sparks another. Advertisers take advantage of this situation to spark a positive association.

Another decision making error is conformity which happens when a person is scared to go against the crowd for instance saying or doing something that can be viewed as different by that very crowd. An example could be when one is associated with a certain culture and so doing something that does not conform to that culture is avoided.

Sunk costs affects the way one makes a decision where by people feel that when a lot of effort, time or money is invested towards something, they will keep going even if the going appears to fail. This error is used mostly by con artists for instance since when they initiate your investment they will keep getting more and more from you because you dont want to lose (Brew, Hesketh  Taylor, 2001, 10).

Attribution errors influence how we make our decision such that we judge people according to their speech (content) even if they were assigned that content randomly.  Will is prescribed where it doesnt exist.  People tend to ignore constraints on peoples behavior when assessing motive.  People also assume that other people will take into account those same constraints when looking at their motives.

In the event that recent events are referenced when evaluating current events it brings about referencing as a decision making error. An example could be  if a person reads about a plane crush where 100 people perished and then hears about  four people dying in a car crash, he she is much less moved than if heshe hasnt heard about any deaths.

In decision making, fallacies arise as error for instance the If-then fallacy. This happens in such a way that if one agrees that the if statement is true then the tendency to agree for the then statement is very high regardless of whether the two statements are correlated. One fails to consider whether the relationships between the two statements are justified.  Many people tend to use this fallacy unconsciously.

Another decision making error is the status quo preference which occurs when people prefer things that they are familiar with or are used to (Drner  Schaub, 1994, 420).

Metaphors are used as figures of speech but in this case thinking in metaphors will definitely affect how we make decisions in our day to day lives. It becomes a problem when a metaphor does not match reality, though thinking in metaphors can be used as a source of motivation and a method of planning the future.
Experiencing excessive optimism influences how we make our decisions.  This happens when people overrate their abilities or skills. People think they are better than others in various professions especially if the other person is junior to himher. As one thinks that the other one is less useful or less skilled it will lead to devaluation of their contribution to projects.

Dollinger  Danis (1998, 758) state that errors in decision making result due to the illusion of control. This happens when a person thinks that heshe can affect the outcome of situations that may be completely random.  When these things go through, they congratulate themselves and blame themselves when they fail even if they are not responsible in any way. They fail to consider the fact that control over the outcome of a situation is usually determined by many factors.

A situation of offer devaluation will influence how we make a decision for instance when two parties are engaged in a negotiation and it happens that one party offers something, it will be valued less highly as compared to when it was offered for no reason at all. It is common understanding that during a negotiation an offer will be viewed as a way of unloading a less valuable asset. The opposite of this situation also applies such that when a concession is made it is valued highly than it should under normal circumstances. The above two conditions therefore bring about the need for a mediator.

Another form of decision making error is loss aversion. This occurs when an individual is faced with a choice between a sure loss and a higher percentage of a greater loss, heshe will choose the risky option even though it is obviously the worst choice.  In this case, incorrect valuation of statistics results into overvaluing the possibility of small chances (Gss, Strohschneider  Halcour, 2000).

Automatic associations and stereotyping results into decision making errors since our brains make unconscious and automatic associations between things in our surrounding (whether true or not), it leads to conscious and unconscious stereotyping. In decision making, this results in devaluation of an option because of an option that is not supported by reality.  This situation definitely results into racism or sexism.  This error can however be improved by pursuing new experiences especially those that show automatic associations to be false. It follows that the mind will correct the error.

When making a decision, limited processing power greatly affects the process of making that particular decision. The mind can hold three to seven things at the same time beyond which it cannot consider anything else.  At this point it will give priority to those which are important. It easy to make a good decision based on small information provided  though this declines as the amount of information increases as much as a persons  confidence in hisher own ability increases with more information.

Another fallacy which affects the way which we make our decisions is the conjunction fallacy. It stipulates that the probability that two related events happen to be higher than the probability of just one of the events is generally considered.  This effect is common in decision making. An option will appear more attractive when more detail is added to it and also if more information about a decision is taken in the confidence towards that decision grows (Strohschneider  Gss, 1998, 700).

False Dichotomies result into errors and therefore associated with decision making. The dichotomies are viewed as sources of psychological problems since they encourage segregation of social groups. They make someone to get more emotional than heshe is able to when considering multiple possibilities. Triandis (1994) says that decision making under influence of this error results in choice between unpleasant options without other possibilities.

There various kinds of biases which also act as decision making errors. First is the anticipation bias which happens when the anticipation of a reward is way stronger than the reward itself.  A person will want something very badly but once heshe has purchased it, it does not make himher as happy as anticipated. The person will not stop there but will move to acquire the next thing that heshe wants. The second one are the cognitive biases in which there is selective search for evidence where people gather facts that support certain conclusions and at the same time disregard other facts that have different conclusions. The third one is the choice supportive bias which occurs when people distort their memories of chosen and rejected options to make the chosen decision look more appealing. Another bias is repetition bias where there is the willingness to believe what we have been told especially when told by different sources. Still under cognitive biases there is premature termination of search for evidence where people have a tendency of picking the first alternative which looks like it might work.  Inertia is also a form of cognitive bias. This occurs when one is not willing to change hisher own pattern of change that was used in past while facing new circumstances. The selective perception is where information that one thinks is not important is left out and therefore qualifies as another form of cognitive bias. The other form of bias which still affects the way we make our decisions is anchoring and adjustment. It occurs that our decisions are influenced by initial information which shapes our view of subsequent information. Then there is the group think where peer pressure influences the making of a decision that one thinks as the group does. In relation to cognitive bias we have the source credibility bias which occurs for instance when one rejects something simply because heshe has a bias against the person or an organization. Someone is forced to accept a statement simply because heshe likes that person (Bazerman  Moore, 2008).

Still under the cognitive biases the incremental decision making acts to affect our way of making decisions. This occurs when a person looks at decision as a small step in an undergoing process thus perpetuating a series of similar decisions. Another relation is drawn from the attribution symmetry as another type of bias. This is where people have a tendency to attribute their success to their abilities and failures to bad luck. When it comes to other peoples successes, we attribute them to good luck and their failures to their mistakes.

Another form of bias which acts to influence our decision making is the self fulfilling prophecy in which people tend to conform to decisions making expectations that others have on their position. Finally there is the underestimating uncertainty where people tend to underestimate future uncertainty because they tend to believe that they have more control over events than they really do (Bazerman, Loewenstein  White, 1992, 230).  

There are a number of memory errors which greatly influence decision making. The consistency bias is associated with the incorrect remembering ones past attitudes and behavior as if they resemble the present ones. Another error is called cryptomnesia where a particular memory is mistaken for imagination. The egocentric bias is another. This is when a person recalls the past in a self-serving manner. For instance remembering about a pair of shoes that was bought as being more attractive as when it was new. Another error is the false memory which comes as a result of confusing the false memories and the true ones. The hindsight bias is when memories of past events are filtered through present knowledge such that those events look more predictable than they actually were. The other type of memory error is the reminiscence bump which is an effect that people tend to recall more personal events from adolescence and adulthood than from other lifetime periods.  The rosy retrospection is an error which occurs when people have a tendency to rate past experiences more positively than when they occurred. Another error is the self-serving bias where one sees himself responsible for desirable results but not the undesirable ones. The final kind of memory error is the suggestibility which is viewed as a misattribution where ideas that were suggested by a questioner are mistaken for memory.

On the other hand, there are several ways in which individuals and groups can reduce errors in decisions and minimize biased decision making to ensure that they dont regret for every decision they make because of unwanted outcomes but improve them.

Some scholars like Fischhoff (1988, 33) argue that the strategies for improving decision making process and minimizing errors lie in four different ways. The first way is to offer warnings about the possibilities of biases in a given decision making process. In this way, decision makers will be wary of any errors that might arise and hence avoid them. The other way to reduce biases is by describing the bias direction. Thirdly he argues that an individual or a group of individuals involved in the decision making process need to provide a dose of the feedback and lastly offering an extensive training program together with feedback, coaching, coupled with other interventions for judgments improvement. However other studies later revealed that the above strategies resulted to very minimal success in improvement of decision making.

The best way to come up with good decisions is to come up with clear distinctions between system 1 and system 2 cognitive functioning that will give a clear framework for effective strategies on how to improve decision making. System 1 is individuals intuitive system that is normally first, automatic, implicit, effortless and emotional way of dealing with issues while System 2 is slower reasoning that embraces consciousness. It is effortful, explicit, and logical as opposed to system 1. Time constraints, lack of information on a given issue to make decision on and being generally busy often make people rely on system 1 that is deceiving and hence increasing chances of making costly errors. Therefore we need to make decisions on basis of system 2 approach (Stanovich  West, 2000, 600).

Replacing intuition with a formal analytical process for decision making is one of the ways to reduce the errors in decisions we make. This can be done by constructing a linear model or formula to weigh and sum the relevant variables to help get to a quantitative forecast on the result, this is however possible and advisable when there is existence of data on past inputs to and outcomes from a given decision making practice. This way the decision makers will access superior predictions. Usually, development of linear models helps to prevent many judgment biases pitfalls.

Taking outsiders perspective is also one of the ways to minimize errors in decision making process. This involves attempting to mentally remove someone from a particular situation or considering the class of decisions to which the problem individuals are faced with belongs. This is geared towards reducing the decision makers overconfidence concerning their knowledge, the time they will take to finish a task and their probability of entrepreneurial triumph. This can also be achieved by asking legitimate outsider(s) for their views concerning a decision to be made. By simply asking encouraging decision makers to consider the opposite of whatever decisions that they are about to make will reduce errors in judgment by minimizing decision biases, the hindsight biases, overconfidence  and anchoring.

Partial debiasing of errors in judgment can be accomplished by having groups make decisions other than individuals, making people accountable for decisions they make and training them on statistical reasoning.  One of the promising debiasing strategies is undermining the cognitive mechanism that is hypothesized as the bias source. Over claiming can also be reduced by requiring people to estimate the contributions of other people but not only theirs.

Analogical reasoning can also be used to minimize errors in decision making process. This can be engaged to minimize the limits on decision makers awareness.  Individuals who are encouraged to see and understand common principles underlying apparently unrelated tasks demonstrate improved abilities to find solutions in a different task that relies on similar underlying principles. Analogical reasoning has been seen to bring hope of overcoming the barriers to judgment improvement.

Additionally, errors can be reduced in decision making by considering and choosing between multiple options simultaneously other than rejecting or accepting options separately. This is clearly demonstrated by the way people display more bounded self-interest (when they focus on their outcomes in relation to those of others rather optimization of their own outcomes)  when they assess one option at a time than while they consider multiple options side by side. Studies also go ahead to establish that when weighing choices separately other than jointly, decision makers will exhibit less willpower.

One should learn also to educate hisher instincts as it relates to the inexperienced gut as a decision making problem. One should trust hisher feelings. An example which best applies to this situation is the use of simulation in piloting or in the military in general. When the trainee goes to the field and meets as similar situation as that which heshe experienced in the simulator, he is expected to trust hisher instincts and will definitely go through it.

Idson, Chug  Bereby-Meyer (2004, 50) observed that in our daily lives we tend to make rush judgments when we are required to make decisions. This normally is triggered when we are issued with deadlines beyond which we would have failed in our respective lines of responsibilities. One should take time before making any decisions. This is in other words termed preserving optionality. We should be encouraged to keep our choices open as long as possible.

When facing new responsibilities one should review or rather appraise the past experiences as this helps to work out unfamiliar responsibilities. This technique also helps to avoid future mistakes. In line with this it should be encouraged to hold after-action reviews. This can be weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly depending on the tempo of making decisions. One can also carry out a review for the previous day work.  
Decision making process has for a long time been seen by many as a simple process hence prompting people to put great trust in their intuition. This however is not the case as many individuals have ended up making uncalled for errors. For minimizing errors in decisions we make, we need to use a deliberative approach to problem solving to avoid more regrets and harsh repercussions for whatever outcomes in our decisions. Under all circumstances mistakes are bound to happen, to this effect people should be encouraged to find ways of reducing them. No one is perfect in this world. We should be calm since if one panics under pressure things will definitely go wrong. It does not pay to just tolerate when mistakes happen but one should learn from them and that is how heshe gets experienced in making subsequent decisions.