Decision making and The Illogical Decisions!

Throughout our lives, we are facing a daily difficult choices. Sometimes we constantly have to solve problems and make decisions, and to do that we need to use our ability to reason and to think about problems then make sense of it. This process of rational thought gives us the information we need to make the right choice.

Mental maps to find solutions

Most psychologists are more interested in behaviour than mental processes. Behaviourist psychologists believed that we learned simply by stimulus and response. Edward Tolman, for example, explained that we do explore the world through a process of trial and error, learning which things we do give us a reward and which don’t, but we also think about these things and build up a “mental map” of the world around us. We can then use this map to help us solve problems and make decisions.

Illogical decisions

Rational thought—reasoning—is crucial in helping us understand problems and gain insights into solving them. It’s what allows us to make sensible decisions, choosing what to do based on the evidence of our experience. But the psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky warned that our reasoning is not always reliable, and that we sometimes make decisions that seem to be rational, but are actually based on mistaken reasoning, or no reasoning at all.

From our experience, we build a set of general “rules of thumb” that we can refer to whenever we make a decision. However, these guidelines are mainly based on a small amount of personal experience and may not provide an accurate picture. They may also be influenced by our personal opinions and beliefs. And although they help us make decisions more quickly and easily, without having to examine the statistical evidence in detail, they often lead us to make irrational decisions—even though we believe they are rational.

Kahneman and Tversky identified several different types of faulty reasoning we use in making decisions, which they called “cognitive biases.”

Cognitive biases are based largely on our personal experiences, so the irrational decisions we make because of them may serve us well enough in our day-to-day lives. But when it comes to important decision making, especially in situations that are new to us, we should be aware of how such bias can mislead us. Understanding these common faults in reasoning can help us avoid making dangerous or costly mistakes.