Decision Making & Judgment

Brainstorm! Take two minutes to write down the big decisions YOU have to make in life!

After two minutes, turn and talk to a neighbor about what made those decisions “big” or challenging/difficult

Dr. Zimbardo time!

Dr. Z

Key terms

• Judgment: ability to make considered decisions or sensible conclusions

• Rationality: the state of being agreeable to reason; reasonable

Weighing the Pluses and Minuses

• Balance sheet method—what are the pros and the cons of doing ______________ ?

• Good method, but not always convenient

• Need to know what pros and cons are…but we don’t always know what they are!– So we use heuristics (shortcuts)

Divide into groups

• Donovan, D’Arcy, Tony• Jerrod, Austin Cairns, Claire, Josh• Danny, Chris, Carrington• Sam, Danielle, Ramon, Austin Crockett• Kayla, Michael, Adrian, Nikki• Delaney, Nellie, Royce, Emma• Nelson, Lexi, Kristina, Marc• Corey, Bryan, Jonathan, • Nathan, Brooke, Henry, Zaria

Group activity

• 1) develop a list of difficult decisions facing students (maybe use one from before)

• 2) focus on a decision you can ALL consider

• 3) individually create a balance sheet to assess the pros and cons of your choice

• 4) reconvene and evaluate your information and make a final group decision

• 15 minutes total for activity

Pros Cons

Additional info needed:

Representative Heuristic

• Multiple choice test:– T T T T T T– F F F T T T– T F F T F T

• Third option best represents the type of sequence you would expect based on your experience

Representative Heuristic

• Misleading–What are the chances of an answer

being true? Being false?• One in two in both cases

– Likelihood of attaining any sequence (T T T T T T T or T F F T F T) is the same

– Your test has T T T T T; what are the chances of the next answer being T? Six T’s in a row???

Availability Heuristic

• Decision based on available information• News media “skews” information,

shaping our view of current events– Experience influences view of available

information– Overemphasize violence

• More deaths per year in America due to car or plane crashes?

• Odds of dying in a car crash: 1 in 98; odds of dying in a plane crash: 1 in 7,178

Heuristics

Representativeness

Anchoring

Availability

Anchoring Heuristic

• Certain ideas that are “anchors” for us– Early learning• Often we share the same political views as

our parents

– Politics, religion, way of life are common anchors

– Sometimes “anchors” can be negative• Racism, for example, is often passed on

Heuristics: Examples

• Representativeness: making decisions about a sample (test items, people, events) according to the population that the sample appears to represent– Feminist bank teller– True/false questions– Tall guy wearing Air Jordans

• Flip a coin 20 times in a row “heads”, chance that next flip will be tails remains 50%

Heuristics: Examples

• Availability: decision on the basis of information that is available in our immediate consciousness– Fear of terrorism vs. fear of car accident

in Middle East– Plane travel vs. car travel– Right to own guns threatened in light of

Sandy Hook shooting

Heuristics: Examples

• Anchoring: decisions made based on certain ideas or standards they hold, ideas or standards that serve as “anchors” in our lives– Childhood imprinting—we vote like our

parents did, share the same values, religious beliefs

– Hard to fully break free of these “anchors” if we choose to

The Framing Effect• How wording effects decision making• People react differently when

something is presented as a gain or a loss

Mad Men

Overconfidence

• People tend to have great confidence in their decisions, whether they are right or wrong– Unaware of how flimsy supporting evidence is– Attention paid to examples that confirm their

opinions and ignore those in conflict– Believe and achieve

• People tend to stick with their incorrect opinions even in the overwhelming face of evidence to the contrary!