Questions tagged [decision-making]
For questions regarding the cognitive processes which result in the selection of a course of action among several alternative scenarios.
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What are popular rationalist responses to Tversky & Shafir?
In the early 90s Tversky & Shafir observed several violations of rationality in human participants, in particular violation of the disjunction effect and sure-thing principle. This has lead to ...
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Is Decision-Making Emotionally Based, with Rationalization as the only Conscious Component?
My interest is in how problem-solving decisions are made, and what, if any skills could be taught to increase people's ability to make effective decisions? Effective, in this case, means that an ...
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What tasks does Bayesian decision-making model poorly?
Bayesianism has been a relatively successful paradigm for modeling decision-making. However, not every psychologist is a bayesian, and there are tasks such as the Tversky & Shafir (1992) ...
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What is the term for human beings' tendency to obey without thinking?
I'm wanting to read more about a certain human behavior, but I am not sure what the proper term for it is, so some of the things I am finding aren't what I am looking for. I'm interested in how Humans ...
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Behaviorist interpretations of decision field theory
Decision field theory is usually presented as a dynamic cognitive model of decision making. However, in its basic form, the theory seems to only be concerned with behavior (decisions) and stimuli (...
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Basis for "we make 35,000 decisions a day" statistic
In an advertisement by Microsoft for their To-Do product they use a statistic that we "make over 35,000" decisions a day. Unsurprisingly, they don't cite a source. Is there any scholarly basis for ...
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Is there a random walk theory that can account for situations with more than two choices?
In the article "Two-stage Dynamic Signal Detection: A Theory of Choice, Decision Time, and Confidence" from 2010 by Pleskac and Busemeyer, a random walk model is presented for situations where a ...
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Who first used the term 'heuristic' in a cognitive science context?
I seem to recall that Herbert Simon borrowed the term from computer science, but I cannot remember the initial paper in which he made use of this borrowing.
A google scholar search reveals some ...
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Are emotions needed to make decisions?
Oprah.com says:
It turns out, though, that for most people there is no such thing as a purely rational self. Decision making is intrinsically linked to our emotions, so much so that when a person ...
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A study about preference for making relatively vs. absolute more money?
I remember reading about a study. I forgot the actual details of it, but the gist of it was: people were asked in what situation they would prefer to live, one where they make \$100,000 dollars and ...
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Are people more likely to pick the odd one out?
I was wondering if there has been any research to suggest that when given a list of options to choose from, people are more likely to pick an option if it looks different to the other options? My ...
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Why is Mr. Monk unsure?
One of the funniest and most psychologically intriguing characters on TV (in my opinion) is Adrian Monk. If you don't know who he is, I highly recommend watching the TV show. It's called "Monk&...
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Why do some people refuse to wear their seat belt while being aware of the risks?
I have multiple friends that simply refuse to wear their seat belt whenever they ride in a car. I make them wear it when in my car, but in any other situation they choose to go without it. They are ...
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Pros and Cons of PsychoPy for designing psychological experiments?
What are the advantages of using PsychoPy for making an experiment (beyond the fact that it is free and open source)? I do not use psychophysics stimuli (no Gabor for instance); my stimuli are static ...
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How does the brain know what to crave?
I remember that at some point on House, M.D., one of the characters mentioned that her patient craved milk because it contained some chemical he/she needed. How does the brain figure out what ...
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Why do soldiers seldom "fight to the death" even if they are going to be killed anyway?
At the siege of Masada, a group of heavily outnumbered Jewish soldiers elected to commit suicide en masse, rather than to be captured by the besieging Romans, who would probably have committed them to ...
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Looking for the term for the relationship between "confidence" and "knowledge" [closed]
I'm looking for the name of an effect that relates confidence in your decisions (dependent variable) against your level of knowledge for a specific domain (independent variable). I don't remember ...
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What do experts consider best mental techniques to avoid succumbing to temptations?
The Internet offers conflicting advice on how to resist temptations. For example, this article stresses the importance of willpower:
Animals appear to obey their appetites in the moment; people — at ...
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Can we truly random choose which finger to raise by counting to 10 in your mind?
If a test person is asked to raise one of his 10 fingers at a given signal, is the choice truly random if he counts in his mind from 1 to 10 and associates with each number one of his fingers? The 1 ...
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Is there a psychological term for enduring hardship to achieve a promised state?
I'm new to CogSci and to Psychology in general, so forgive me if this question has been answered before...
I see a pattern in many sociological environments that goes like this:
Someone promises a ...
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Caller's dilemma [closed]
A close friend, who is going through a mentally rough and disturbed period, just called me, and it made me come up with a question.
You call a close friend and someone picks up; but you're not sure ...
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