BIASES IN MAKING CHOICES

Making choices is not an easy task. It regularly creates stress and regret. Everyone wants to make the right choices or at least what we imagine the right choice might be. The process is complicated and made less effective than might be because of a variety of cognitive biases that impair logical th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Etc. 2016-10, Vol.73 (4), p.314-320
Main Authors: DeVito, Joseph A., DeVito, Joe
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Analysis
Behavior
Bias
Choice (Psychology)
Cognitive biases
College Students
Consumerism
Decision making
Dining Facilities
Evaluative Thinking
Evidence
Inferences
Interpersonal Relationship
Judgment
Leadership
Logical Thinking
Methods
Motor Vehicles
Set (Psychology)
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Making choices is not an easy task. It regularly creates stress and regret. Everyone wants to make the right choices or at least what we imagine the right choice might be. The process is complicated and made less effective than might be because of a variety of cognitive biases that impair logical thinking and analysis and lead to errors of judgment, misevaluations, and bad choices. The trick is to identify the biases and to confront them with more logical, more mindful, analysis. Here, we single out just five of the many biases (the ambiguity bias, the bandwagon bias, the anchoring bias, the confirmation bias, and the status quo bias), explaining how they operate, offering some examples, and proposing counter measures you can take to help reduce the influence of these biases. The antidote to the ambiguity bias is to reduce the ambiguity so that all choices can be examined more objectively.
ISSN:0014-164X
2168-9245