The Reality of Decision-Making

Almost by definition decision-making is typical human activity, and therefore importantpsychological subject. The starting point of its classical conception within psychology could be tracedback to economy and mathematic, with ideas of human as rational economic being, and conceptualising decision making as choice between two or more alternatives, and as such being a separate event in space and time. Already in fifties Herbert Simon challenged such a view with his concept of bounded rationality, emerging from the joint effect of internal limitations of the human mind, and the structure of external environments in which the mind operates. During the last decades with the shift to the real word situations where decisions are embedded in larger tasks, becoming so part of the study of action, the lost rational human appeared again as efficient creature in the complex environment. Gigerenzer showed how heuristics help in this process.

Decision context does not influence only the values of choices, but also the values of outcomes, e.g. the amounts expressed as gains or losses. If choices are framed in such a way

that reference point is low on the scale of values, the gain will be greater in comparison with

high positioned reference point. Fifty Euros is a lot for poor and a little for rich. Framing effect contradict the invariance axiom of the utility theory, which demands that wording should not influence deciding, because preferences should be defined only with outcomes and connected probabilities, while because of framing effect different coding of outcomes (as gains or losses) change the outcomes assessment. This is evident in the famous Kahneman and Tversky task regarding efficacy of the health programmes expressed either as a number of survivors or as a number of victims. It seems that negative frames demand greater degree of cognitive processing and have longer response timesMain research work in the field of the so called naturalistic decision making was going on mainly in the frame of the crisis events and radically change the view of the nature of crisis decision making. It is not by chance, that US Army devoted a lot of resources and time to the study of these questions, e.g. in the project TADMUS (Tactical Decision Making UnderStress). Many bad decisions whose outcomes count in human lives demand this. Up to then decision-making researches study only one segment of the decision-making, the decision event. Main part of the decision making should be going on when decision maker (usually one person) overview known and defined set of choices, weight probable consequences of particular choice and then select one, depending on his goals and values, which should be stable and known. Researchers focused on the selection process of the best alternative.

Involved participants were usually inexperienced, e.g. students. But then psychology went out of the laboratory in the real life, joined firemen, police officers, medical staff, etc. that is experienced participants. Quite different image of the decision making appeared. Classical decision-making models were not adequately describing the situation. Decision makers focused on the definition of the situation, and on the base of their experience in similar previous events, while taking into account constraints of the given situation, choose the most adequate response. Possible responses were assessed on the base of the projection of their possible consequences into the future and search for the possible unwanted effects. If unwanted effects were not predicted, the response was selected. This new approach differs at least in three ways from the classical one, which emphasizes simultaneous assessment of a number of alternatives, being based on analytical methods of values and probabilities connection, and was searching for the optimal solutiondecision maker pays his attention mostly to situation assessment or to the discovering of the nature of the problem,

·         particular alternatives are judged successively with the help of mental simulation ofoutcomes, and

·         alternative is accepted if it is satisfying (not necessary optimal).

Fundamental difference lie in the fact that in everyday situations decisions are the part of the

larger tasks, which decision maker try to accomplish. In the laboratories decision-making was   going on outside the meaningful connections, while in reality it is the mean of achieving the wider goals. Decisions are the part of the broader tasks consisting of the problem definition, understanding of meaningful solutions, acting for goals achievement, and effects assessments.

As one of the researchers said , studying decision-making in dynamic, real time context changes it into the part of the study of action, and not study of choice. Decision making is the

matter of guiding and maintaining the continuous flow of behaviour directed toward the set of goals and not the set of separated events of choice dilemmas. Decision-making in reality is a joint function of two factors :

·         task characteristics, and

·         individual’s knowledge and experience relevant for the task.

Decision-making is often going on in stressful conditions. Stress is caused mainly by the

following characteristics of the situations, called stressors :

·         multiple information sources,

·         incomplete, conflicting information,

·         rapidly changing, evolving scenarios,

·         requirements for team coordination,

·         adverse physical conditions,

·         performance pressure,

·         time pressure,

·         high work/information load,

·         auditory overload/interference,

·         threat.

They represent important factors and conditions in decision-making, which often determine the nature of decision, consequent behaviours and their outcomes.

Conclusion From This Article

Decision making as one of the most characteristic human mental activity is shown to us – orbetter studies and thinking about it are showing this – as a very complex phenomenon. The image of the human decision maker is circling between irrationality and bounded rationality. If classical models of rational (economic) human took him from time and space, and put him with his decision making, that should be rational, but was not, into certain abstract frozen space, with the development of knowledge he is gradually coming back, to find himself in the theories of naturalistic decision making. The image of the alive concrete human, adapted to his environment, is exchanging its artificial abstract image.

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