People make thousands of decisions each and every day, some big and some small.
Many factors contribute to poor choices.
Understanding how these processes work and influence your thinking may help you to make better decisions in the future.
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so that make decisions quickly and economically, your brain relies on a number of cognitive shortcuts known asheuristics.
What Are Heuristics?
Heuristics are mental rules or shortcuts that allow you to make judgments quite quickly and oftentimes quite accurately.
But they can also lead to fuzzy thinking and poor decisions.
Becoming more aware of how heuristics impact choices can help you avoid making bad decisions.
Poor Comparisons
Comparison is one tool that people use when making decisions.
You assign value based on how items compare to other things.
But what happens when you make poor comparisons?
Or when the items you compare your options to are not representative or equal?
For example, how far out of your way would you go to save $25?
This is an example of faulty comparison.
When making decisions, people often make rapid comparisons without thinking about their options.
Optimism Bias
Surprisingly, people tend to have a natural-born optimism that can hamper good decision-making.
This tendency toblame the victimsprotects people from admitting that they are just as susceptible to tragedy as anyone else.
Other Reasons for Bad Decision-Making
Several other factors can contribute to poor choices.
Past experiences, individual factors, biases, and fatigue can also play a part.
Because of this, teens tend to respond impulsively without fully considering the consequences of their choices.
You might start by asking them to take a break and consider other options before making up their mind.
Encourage them to talk to someone else if they struggle with a decision.
Confirmation bias is a bang out of cognitive bias in which people favor information that confirms their existing beliefs.
This bias leads people to ignore data that contradict their current thinking, contributing to distorted perceptions of reality.
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