Decision-Making and Problem-Solving

Problem-solving refers to the mental activity people undertake to reach a goal while decision-making involves evaluating alternatives and choosing a course of action. There are many different ways that we can go about these processes. Deductive reasoning would begin with an assumption or hypothesis which is then tested against possible evidence. For example, the statement all birds have feathers and Cardinals are birds so Cardinals must have feathers. Inductive reasoning begins with observations and ends with a generalization or hypothesis that fits the observations. For example, a person who breaks out in hives each time they eat shellfish will likely conclude that they're allergic to shellfish.

To solve problems people can use logical stepwise approaches including trial and error in which people tried different approaches until they reach the correct solution or algorithms. Step by step approach is guided by logic which can be more efficient, but these types of reasoning take time and effort and in everyday life we often rely on problem-solving shortcuts related to intuition or flashes of insight based on unconscious information processing or heuristics mental shortcuts that simplify decision-making by replacing a difficult question with an easier one. For example, the affect heuristic describes a situation where a person makes a decision based on emotions rather than a reasoned evaluation of potential risks and rewards, for example a medical procedure described as having a 3 in 10 chance of leading to serious side-effects feels risky well 1 described as having a 7 in 10 chance of being side-effect free feel safe the actual odds of side-effects are identical but the first presentation triggers fear making people less likely to choose the treatment.

The availability heuristic involves relying on the most easily available information to make a decision rather than making use of all available information for example people assume that there are more English words that begin with K and words that have K as a third letter because it's far easier for them to think of words that begin with K. The representative heuristic involves making assumptions about individual persons or things based on mental prototypes, for example stereotypes about race gender and class heuristics often work well for simple or fast decisions but they can often lead to bias decision-making. These biases are part of people's schemas but they can also skew their picture of the world, for example the fundamental attribution error occurs when someone weighs a person's potential character traits more highly than contacts and environment when judging the causes of behavior for example people may assume a driver ran a red light because he's a reckless jerk overlooking the fact that the driver had the Sun glaring in his eyes on the flip side of this the actor-observer effect occurs when people attribute their own behavior to context but I tribute the behavior of others to personality traits for example a student may believe that they fail to test because it was unreasonably hard but think that their annoying roommate failed it due to their laziness or stupid relatedly the self-serving bias involves attributing success to personal traits but failure to outside forces for example when they pass a test they believe it's because that they're smart but when they fail it it's because the instructor doesn't like them hindsight bias refers to the perception of knowing all along with the outcome of a particular event would be for example after an underdog team wins a game fans may claim that they saw the victory coming and confirmation bias occurs when a person considers only evidence that supports their view.

So, someone with a strong opinion about the health benefits of a certain superfood may discount evidence disconfirming their beliefs even if someone avoids these biases they may still run into other barriers to effective problem solving for example functional fixedness is the inability to recognize that an object can be used in non-traditional ways such as using a wrench as a paperweight or to prop open a door rigid thinking or a fixed perspective that is stubbornly maintained as well as the inability to recognize irrelevant information can also inhibit a problem-solving. These two styles of thinking can be further described as being part of two systems during fast thinking:

System 1 thinking the mind makes use of instinct intuition schemas and truistic Stern's rapid conclusions for example a pedestrian seeing a car careening down the street and diving out of the way we also employ slow thinking. System 2 thinking or careful analytical reasoning to make complex decisions we would like to think that people rely mostly on system 2 in practice system 1 thinking often guides people or is more influential for example people are often fooled by the way a problem is framed consumers are much more likely to buy a 90% fat free product that a product advertises containing 10% fat these two statements can be the same information but the framing makes all the difference the positives that in the first statement is much more appealing to a decision maker.


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