Reasons why you make bad decisions

How many decisions do you think you make during the average day? Dozens? Hundreds, perhaps? Psychologists believe that the number is actually in the thousands. Some of these decisions have huge effects over the course of our lives (such as going to school, getting married, or having children), while others are relatively trivial (such as having a ham or turkey sandwich for lunch).

Some of these choices seem to be very good (you choose a college major which then leads to a rewarding career), while others are not that great (the turkey sandwich you chose was awful and upset your stomach) .

So when you look back on your life and think about some of the poor choices you made, you might be wondering how you made the decisions that now seem so poor in the background. Why did you marry someone who was wrong for you? Why did you buy that exaggerated car when you have four kids and need a bigger vehicle? What did you think when you bought those awful high-waisted jeans this fall?

While it will certainly continue to make bad decisions , you can gain a deeper understanding of the process behind these sometimes irrational choices. There are a number of factors that contribute to poor choices and knowing how these processes work and affect your thinking may help you make better decisions in the future.

Next, learning why to take spiritual shortcuts sometimes leads to poor choices.

2 – Spiritual Shortcuts Can Get You Up

If we had to think through every possible scenario for every possible decision, we probably would not get much done in a day. To make quick and economical decisions, our brain relies on a number of cognitive shortcuts known as heuristics . These mental rules-of-thumb allow us to make decisions fairly quickly and often quite accurately, but they can also lead to unclear thinking and poor decisions.

One example of this is a cunning, sensible shortcut known as the anchoring bias . In many different situations, people use an initial starting point as an anchor which is then adjusted to provide a final estimate or value. For example, if you are buying a home and you know that homes in your target area usually sell at an average price of $ 358,000, you will probably use that figure as a basis for negotiating the purchase price of the home you choose.

In a classic experiment by researchers Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, participants were asked to spin a wheel of fortune that offered a number between 0 and 100. The subjects were asked to guess how many countries in Africa belong to the United Nations. Those who got a large number on the prosperous wheel were more likely to guess that there were many African countries in the UN, while those who got a lower number would probably be able to give a much lower estimate.

So, what can you do to reduce the potential negative impact of these heuristics on your decisions? Experts suggest that just being more aware of them can help. In the case of the anchoring bias, a variety of possible estimates may emerge. So when buying a new car, a range of reasonable prices comes up, rather than focusing on the overall average price of a particular vehicle. If you know that a new SUV costs somewhere between $ 27,000 and $ 32,000 for the size and features you want, then you can make a better decision about how much to bid on a particular vehicle.

Next, discover how the comparisons you make sometimes lead to bad decisions.

3 – You often make poor comparisons

How do you know you’ve got a great deal on the digital tablet you just bought? Or how do you know that the price you paid for a liter of milk at the grocery store was fair? The equation is one of the most important tools used to make decisions. You know what the typical price of a tablet or bile of milk is, so you compare the deals to find in order to choose the best possible price. We value value based on how items compare to other things.

But what happens if you make poor comparisons? Or if the items you are comparing with your options are not representative or equal? Consider, for example – how far would you go to save $ 25?

If I told you that you can save $ 25 on a $ 75 item by driving 15 minutes out of your way, you probably would. But if I told you you could save $ 25 off a $ 10,000 item, would you still be willing to go out of your way to save money? In most cases, people are less willing to travel further to save the money on the more expensive item. Why? Twenty-five dollars is still the same amount anyway.

In such cases, you have just fallen victim to a faulty comparison. When you compare the amount you save, $ 25 is like a much bigger saving when compared to a $ 75 item than it is when compared to a $ 10,000 item.

When we make decisions, we often make quick comparisons without really thinking about our options. Avoiding bad decisions, relying on logical and thoughtful examination of the options can sometimes be more important than relying on your immediate “gut reaction”.

4 – You can be too optimistic

Surprisingly, people tend to have a natural birth optimism that can hinder good decision making. In one fascinating study, researcher Tali Sharot asked participants what they thought were the chances of a number of unpleasant events happening – things like robbery or a terminal illness. After the subjects gave their predictions, the researchers then told them what the real probabilities were.

When people are told that the risk of something bad happening is lower than they expected, they tend to then adjust their predictions to match the new information they have learned. When they discover that the risk of something bad happening is actually much higher than they estimated, they tend to simply ignore the new information. For example, if a person predicts that the chance of dying from smoking cigarettes is only 5 percent, but then is told that the actual risk of dying is actually closer to 25 percent, people will probably ignore the new information and at their initial hold estimate.

Part of this exaggeratedly optimistic outlook stems from our natural tendency to believe that bad things happen to other people, but not to us. When we hear of something tragic or unpleasant to someone else, we tend to look at things the person may have done to cause the problem. This tendency to blame the victims protects us from acknowledging that we are just as susceptible to the tragedy as anyone else.

Sharot refers to this as the optimism bias , or our tendency to underestimate the probability of good events, while underestimating the probability of bad events. She suggests that it is not necessarily a matter of believing that things will just magically fall into place, but rather overconfidence in our own abilities to make good things happen.

So, what impact does this optimism have on prejudice on the decisions we make? Since we may be too optimistic about our own abilities and prospects, we are more likely to believe that our decisions are the best. Experts may warn that smoking, sit-conscious or too much sugar can kill, but our optimism bias leads us to believe that it mostly kills other people, not us.

 

by Abdullah Sam
I’m a teacher, researcher and writer. I write about study subjects to improve the learning of college and university students. I write top Quality study notes Mostly, Tech, Games, Education, And Solutions/Tips and Tricks. I am a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.

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