Critical Analysis of Studies Regarding Decision Making

Defining terms

Decision making is defined as assessing information and choosing among two or more alternatives. Compared to deductive reasoning, decision making is much more ambiguous. Heuristics are general strategies that typically produce a correct solution, when we need to make a decision we use this. Emotion is a psychological reaction to a specific stimulus, in contrast to a mood, which is a more general, long-lasting experience. Deductive reasoning is the type of reasoning that begins with some specific premises that are assumed to be true. Next one judges whether those premises allow a conclusion to be drawn, based on the principles of logic. These are all important terms in regards to decision making (Farmer, 2019).

History

There are different ways to make decisions. Decision making uses process and logic to arrive at a result. Gerd Gigerenzer (May 17th, 2011) discusses that decision making goes back to the 1600’s – to Descartes and Pointcarre who created a first ‘calculus’ of decision making. Heuristics was founded by Herbet Simon, who created the theory of decision making. His theory consisted of three steps.

• Step 1: The intelligence phase: finding, identifying, and formulating the problem or situation that calls for a decision
• Step 2: The design phase: develop alternatives
• Step 3: The choice phase: evaluate the alternatives that were developed in the design phase and choose one of them

Herbert acknowledged there are parameters affecting decision-making. Lack of knowledge, cognitive limitations and time restraint, all make decision-making difficult. Herbet used the term, “satisficing” combining “satisfy” and “suffice”. This stating that humans are in search of taking the option that is good enough, or satisfying (Gigrenzer, 2017).

Irving Janis and Leon Mann also contributed to the decision-making process (Heredia, Arocena, & Gárate, (2004). They advanced the idea that “the need to make a decision involves a conflict which en-genders a certain degree of stress, the excess or absence of which is in turn a major determinant of the subject’s failure to make a go-od decision, since it is associated with unproductive information search, assessment and decision making patterns” (Heredia., et al 2004 p.110). Humans feel a pressure or stress and in turn must make a decision. When making decisions, people are worried about what they will gain or lose. These losses directly affect one’s self-esteem, and this was an idea both Janis and Mann introduced. Their theories have been extensively acclaimed in the research world of decision making.

Intro

The decisions that one makes, directly affect the people around them. It also can affect one’s self-esteem and feelings (Johnson & Wood, 2017). Making poor decisions can shift into a wrong outcome, and make an individual unhappy. Being positive and focusing on good things can help you flourish in life. Being positive can positively affect your health. The results from research done by Ruthig, Trisko, and Chipperfield provided that in a two-year span, you can shift the way you think and if you continue to maintain positivity, it is beneficial for mental and physical well-ness. Decision making is on a scale of minor, to large decisions. Decision making include things such as:

• deciding which college to go to
• deciding what to eat for breakfast
• deciding which shirt to buy
• deciding whether to keep a job
• deciding what career path to take
• deciding whether to stay with someone you love
• deciding to have kids
• deciding to get married
• deciding how to style your hair
• deciding which route to take to work

Almost everything involves making a decision. Research on this topic is crucial and allows insight on how the brain process and deals with such. Becoming knowledgeable about a topic will only help to better understand it, and use it to an advantage. The more we know about why we make the decisions we do, and how we feel, the easier it is to figure out how we move forward and flourish in life.

Age

The research done by Missier Del, contributed to the idea that age can determine competence in making decisions. The method in this study consisted of 303 Swedish adults in a longitudinal study, who completed the Adult Decision-Making Competence questionnaire one at a time (Del, Hansson, Parker, Bruine de Bruin, & Mäntylä, 2020). Participant were informed what the study was and did health screenings and cognitive testing. They were provided with instructions and examples of each task. These tasks were completed alone, without external opinions. The measure that was included was the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale–Revised (WAIS-R) Block Design (Del., et al., 2020). The task measured the participant’s ability to correctly apply choices by rules. For example, deciding which insurance company is better or which consumer product is better (Del., et al., 2020). Participants were given 10 decisions and asked to choose one or more options in each trial. This test allowed the participant to choose which thing would give the best outcome, the same idea Janis and Mann produced. The results concluded that when age increased, participants were more likely to make a better decision. At a younger age, there is a frame of resistance in decision making. What the study predicted is what would happen, over time young adults are less likely to take risks.

Critique of Age

This research provides great insight into an aspect of decision making. It discusses and provides a study on how with age, humans take less risks. With age comes experience and that can be beneficial in making decisions. The study is a longitudinal study which means it is done over a long time, specifically this was done over 5 years. Over 5 years, they studied how and why people made the decisions they did. Within this, they made sure the participants completed the measures alone and this is important. In making decisions, other people can create pressures and influence decision making so this made the study more valid. Something the study lacked to mention was were it took place, but this could’ve been a privacy factor.

Career

The research done by In-Jo Park discusses emotional intelligence, decision making, and anxiety in which career path to take. The study targets cognition and emotion, and believes the two are closely related. The study discusses how one’s emotions can shift the decisions they make (Park, Lee, Kim, M., Kim, J., & Jahng, 2019). They conducted a study with 117 participants who all agreed to be a part of the study. The study took course over 21 days, and the participants provided daily ratings of their affective states. The procedure consisted of going to a session where an author instructed them on what to do. They would use smart phones to rate their daily affective states and if they missed a day, they were instructed to make up for it. Rating began one week after the session and they received a text saying, “Today is the first day of rating your affective experience and attitude toward career decisions; the rating will continue for the following 21 days. You will receive a text message at 9 p.m. each day” (Park, et al., 2019 p.315). This rate system allowed for attitudes about one’s self and career over the course of time. Factors like goals, problem solving, and behaviors to self-appraisal were included. Measures such as daily career choice anxiety, daily positive effect, emotional intelligent, and stress levels were included in the rating system. Results concluded that emotional intelligence directly affects decisions. The findings confirmed that daily positive affect is the strongest linking both emotional intelligence and daily career choice anxiety. Participants who focused on positive emotions, were more sure of career paths. Participants who had high stress and focused on negative emotions, were more unsure of career choices (Park, et al., 2019).

Critique of Career

This research gave understanding of why people feel stress and anxiety in regards to choosing a career path. It notes to a solution that if one changes their perspective to be more positive, then they could possibly be more sure of themselves. Stress and anxiety are unwanted factors when discussing your career, so it was important for them to dive into these two topics. Emotional Intelligence is the premise of my research paper and this study concluded that emotions and making decision directly affect each other.

Divorce

The research done by Sarah Crabtree aims to discuss the reason of decision making in divorce when a marriage is suffering. The study included individuals who had reported thinking about divorce. It included married individuals aging 25 to 50 years old and married at least one year. The participants were interviewed over the phone for up to an hour. 10 interviews were conducted at 3 different sites, making 30 interviews. The interview included 12 questions exploring everything related to divorce (Crabtree, 2018). These questions answers topics of divorce ideation, meaning and sense making, moments of clarity and confidence, feelings of being stuck in their decision making, identity, love, happiness, reconciliation, and how openly participants communicated their divorce ideation with others (Crabtree, 2018 p.609). Inductive qualitative content analysis was used in sorting out the data. Results found that love and happiness are the main factors of divorce. The results found that one makes the decision to leave when love and happiness are jeopardized. This study provided there are deeper rooted problems then growing apart for one to make a decision to leave. It was noted most participants did not speak of love in an idealistic way, but in an individualistic way (Crabtree, 2018).

Critique of Divorce

Divorce is a common theme in America and important to discuss when talking about decisions. There are many different decision making styles and this article highlighted that everyone has their own reason for divorce or thinking of divorce. Divorce includes not only the two in love, but the family of the combined marriage as well. This study resolved that the reason one divorces another is happiness and love, lack of so. When discussing decision making, there can be minor things that make us change our mind but in big decision, powerful things like happiness and love are what can cause us to make a decision.

Happiness

Happiness can drive one’s decision making. Humans choose to do something in hopes it makes them happy. Being hopeful about the future is something that contributes to overall happiness, if one is not hopeful they will probably be less happy (Bubic, 2018). In making decisions, some people focus on the current and not the future. Each individual makes decisions differently and this directly effects their happiness.

The research done by Andreja Bubic, is an empirical and quantitative study. It discusses well-being and satisfaction in correlation with making decisions. The study uses 330 participants (113 male, 217 female) and they were approached in their homes. Measures completed were Consideration of Future Scale, Orientation of Happiness Scale, Satisfaction of Life Scale, and Bradburn Scale of Psychological Well-Being. Each participant completed the measures that had multiple tests within them. Data aimed to discover ideas between happiness and well-being. Results concluded that individuals who were excited for the future, were happier. “When considering the relationships among decision making styles and orientations to happiness, the results indicated that present focus was positively correlated with orientation to pleasure, and negatively associated with orientations to meaning and engagement” (Bubic, 2019 p.227). This study only focuses on present and future focus in correlation with happiness but provides that being positive and optimistic can be beneficial in your overall happiness.

Tips for being positive

• Pick a mantra and repeat it.
• Pay less attention to negative thoughts
• Change your language
• Start a daily gratitude journal
• Be kind to yourself
• Go outdoors
• Consider meditation
• Journal about your “best self”
• Give back to others
• Practice random acts of kindness
• Exercise
• Don’t try so hard, let it happen naturally

Major Issues/ Contributions

There are so many studies regarding decision making, it is hard to focus on just one aspect. Originally, I had hoped to focus on how being positive can be beneficial for your happiness and health, but my research shifted into why we make the decisions we do and what this means. There are so many aspects of decision making that are interesting because decision making affects one’s everyday life. Research provided that being positive can be beneficial in happiness and regardless of the outcome, if you’re optimistic about the future you can still be happy. On top of that, research provided so much more insights. With age and experience, decision making gets easier. Decision making differs person to person and what might be an easy choice for you, is difficult for someone else. Some people are only focused on temporary happiness in the present, and not what will make them happy in the long run.