What Comes With a Little Research

           So as some people may, or may not, know we had to compose a post with the help of a little research. Knowing that such a post was to be due on the ensuing monday I sat down on a fairly gloomy Sunday afternoon and began to browse around for a suitable source of information. After what seemed to be an eternity of searching I came across an article that really caught my eye. Titled “Decision Making: Factors that Influence Decision Making, Heuristics Used, and Decision Outcomes”, the article came from the StudentPulse database. The article, through a miracle of God, also fit the prescribed requirements that had been previously set by Admiral Gee.

         Well now that the stars had aligned and allowed the article be informative and also up to par on the requirements I finally began the process of making the relation between the article and my topic of choice. The article brought up the concept of what factors dictated the outcome of a decision. The factors that the article really stressed upon were “past experiences, a variety of cognitive biases, an escalation of commitment and sunk outcomes, individual differences, including age and socioeconomic status, and a belief in personal relevance.” Now before reading this article I had thought of how individual differences and biases would affect the decisions that people made but not so much about the issues of past experiences or commitment.

         Now some of you may be thinking, “Well John Carey, you idiot, of course past experiences are influential!” Until this point I believe that I had not thought about past experiences because I saw them as more of a subliminal, instinctual action. If someone were to have a negative outcome to a decision they would relate the action with a bad experience, so if encountered again the action would instinctually be shot down and pushed away. The same scenario can be reversed to represent positively influential situations. While these are true the article pushed a point of view that I had never even began to consider, “that future decisions based on past experiences are not necessarily the best decisions.” This concept really set me back a few steps, this notion blew my mind.. And as I do with everything I immediately made an analogy with fishing. If you go fishing and don't catch anything it can be a very negative experience because fishing is a long, patient activity. But if you let this negative experience influence your future decision to never go fishing again you would never know what it would be like to have a positive fishing experience. Actually catching a fish. If something was bad in the past it does not mean that the same thing will be bad in the future.

          The other portion of the decision making I was oblivious to was commitment. After reading what the article had to say it was as clear as day why commitment had a large impact on decisions. It related commitment more to the level of risk involved in the decisions being made. If someone has more “time, money, and effort” invested in a project or action they feel more inclined to take riskier decisions. This is especially true if they have made the big investments and the project takes a turn for the worst. Then people are much more likely to take risks in order to try and return to equal on the project.

          The article really opened my eyes. It brought forth lots of concepts that I had never thought of affecting decisions. Now I will be much more conscious of these factors and decision will become lots more thought involving. How is all of this going to affect your decisions?...