Role Of Psychology: Decision making is an element of life. Our brains are ever busy, whether we are making simple decisions such as what to have as a breakfast meal or making big decisions such as deciding on a career, money investment or carrying out health-related decisions.
Although some individuals assume that they make sound decisions, as psychology reveals, choices made by humans are heavily shaped by the mental cuts, emotions, prejudices, stress, and even sleep habits.
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The presence of psychology in decision making tells why individuals tend to do things that do not fit their favor, why intelligent people tend to make wrong decisions, and why the environment has subtle influences on behavior.
The knowledge of these mental forces may enable individual persons, business organizations and policymakers to make more informed decision-making.
Definition of Decision Making in Psychology?
Role Of Psychology: Decision making in psychology is a thought process where an individual chooses among the available choices.
This is a process that entails perception, memory, attention, emotion and reasoning. The human brain is not to analyze all the decisions in details as this is going to use too much time and power.
Daily needs make the brain use heuristics, which are shortcuts in the mind that simplify the complicated decision-making processes.
In as much as heuristics is efficient, it does give generate predictable errors called cognitive biases. These stereotypes affect how people make money choices, health options, relationships and how they act at the work place.
Two categories of thinking that stimulate decision-making
The psychologists tend to describe the process of decision making by a dual process model of thinking:
Thinking Directly (Automatic Thinking)
It is fast, instinctive, and emotional thinking. It is automatic and is one that makes people respond immediately. Quick thinking can be used in day to day activities but it is prone to mistakes and biases.
Slow Slowness (Slowness Effectiveness)
This mode of thinking is a conscious, rational and hard-working thinking. It takes analytical scrutiny, options evaluation and consequences. Slow thinking helps to make the thinking more accurate yet needs time and mental effort.
The daily decisions in our lives are caused by fast thinking, whereas the highly or novel decisions are caused by slow thinking.
The Biases of the Cognitive Effects on Decision Making
Role Of Psychology: Systematic biases in thinking refer to the deviation profiles of rationality. They happen due to the fact that the brain is more efficient rather than accurate.
Loss Aversion
Individuals have a greater loss than proportional gain. This bias is that people have more fear of losing money than earning money and hence act too cautiously in relation to financial matters or change aversion.
Confirmation Bias
People feel like searching information that would validate their already existing beliefs and disregard the facts that do not concur with them. This is a bias that influences political opinions, decisions on investments, and personal relations.
Framing Effect
Presentation of information plays a great role in decision-making. Same information has varied responses of people based on whether it is framed as a loss or gain.
Default Bias
Whenever one of the choices is the default one, there are more chances that people will be inclined to act on it, particularly when the choice feels complicated or unfamiliar.
Such biases are subconscious, i.e. individuals do not always realize that their judgment is being affected.
Influence of Emotions in Decision Making
Role Of Psychology: Emotions are not adversaries of good decision making as it is commonly perceived. Emotions give useful data concerning the risks, rewards and personal values. Attention is controlled by feelings as fear, excitement, regret and satisfaction, the drivers of priorities.
Yet, strong emotions may be judgement distorting. Fear is prone to avoidance, excitement to risky behavior and anger that leads to an impulsive action.
Self-awareness on emotions enables one to be aware of the influence of emotions without being overwhelmed by them.
Stress and Its Effects on our Decisions
Stress has great effects on brain decision-making process. When we experience stress, the body is in a state of survival hence it is more accurate than fast. This impairs the mental capacity of the brain to reason and analyze the long-term implications.
The high stress levels usually lead to:
- Impulsive decisions
- Short-term thinking
- Extreme risk-takings or risk-avoidance.
- Decreased problem-solving capability.
This is the reason why whenever one makes decisions in times of pressure, they often regret it. Better results require postponing the essential decisions in the times of stress.
Sleep and Cognitive Energy in the Quality of a Decision
Sleep can be very instrumental in decision making. Sleep-deprived people have fewer resources to evaluate risks, be impacted by feedback and exhibit reduced control over emotions.
Exhaustion makes the use of quick thinking and emotional responses more frequent.
Poor sleep is linked to:
- Reduced attention
- Increased impulsivity
- Poor risk assessment
- Lack of learning ability through errors.
When one makes significant decisions when they are exhausted it will cause them to make poor decisions.
The Effect of Environmental and Choice Design on Make Decision
The environment influences decisions made not only by the head but also by the environment. Choice architecture is a term used to refer to the structure and presentation of options. Minor design alterations could have a potent impact on behavior without depriving the freedom of choice.
Examples include:
- Exposing the healthier foods to the eye level.
- Enhancing positive choices and making them more convenient.
- Outlining suggested options.
It is the concept, which the world uses in marketing, digital platforms, workplace systems, and public policy. High quality environments enhance improved decision making by decreasing the level of friction and confusion.
Psychology There are factors that define decision making
| Psychological Factor | How It affects Decisions | Real world example |
|---|---|---|
| Cyntoximation strategy | Fast decision making | Intuition |
| Impeccability | Impulsive purchasing | Pause before making big decisions |
| Strategy choice | Evolution of choices | Delay under pressure |
| Planning on paper | Hurry to Subscribe to choices | Seek dissonance |
| Pollution of the brain | Opposing worldviews | Real-world example |
| What to do with a bribe | Pause in the Big Decisions | Love story |
| Decisions affected by timing | Influence of perception | Premeditation strategy |
| Decision and avoidance | Seek dissonance | Seal of in in |
The Importance of Knowing the Decision Psychology
The study of the psychology of decision making can assist a human being to avoid the traps that are common with all the majority of that people, it can improve leadership and management, it can improve financial planning, and it can also help in making a healthy choice of a lifestyle.
Businesses make more efficient products with the input of psychological understanding, and governments can use the understanding to enhance the result of policy decisions.
Psychologically, it helps the individual to speed up or rather slow down when needed, challenge automatic responses, and make decisions that are consistent with long-range objectives and not short-term feelings.
Role Of Psychology: The role that psychology has in decision making brings out a simple fact that human beings are not solely rational. Decisions are influenced by prejudice, feelings, levels of stress, the quality of sleep, and the surrounding in which decisions are made.
Fast thinking ensures that we continue living the day-to-day life when slow thinking ensures that we make better long term decisions.
Knowing how the mind functions, people can become conscious when their judgment is at stake and minimize mistakes, make more considered and balanced decisions in accordance to their personal values.
More information does not start better decisions, but the understanding of the way the brain processes that better does.