More Individual Decision Making Concepts

Heuristics and Biases: Heuristics are rules of thumb that people use to make decisions. Heuristics are derived from past experience and are often just shortcuts to decision making based on a person’s past experiences. Heuristics are also informed by our individual biases. Biases, like heuristics, are based on past experience, and are grounded in a number of factors both positive and negative. Thus, someone can be biased against a racial or ethnic group, an organizational department or division, people from another part of the country (East Coast Liberals, Southerners, etc.), ideologically biased, biased in favor of consensus decision-making, etc. Or, a person can be biased in favor of people trained in a particular field, from a certain part of the world, who write well, who are skilled communicators, who have a sense of humor, who attended particular educational institutions, etc. Biases can cut both ways.

Decision-Making by Objection: When a group follows a decision-making suggestions, as long as no one speaks out. Often, the first idea that seems viable is accepted by a decision-making body because it is the easiest path. Basically, if no one complains, the first decision that is acceptable is acted upon. When no one objects to an idea, evidence is no longer weighed (Step 4), alternatives are not proposed or evaluated, and research stops as soon as an acceptable solution emerges. Often, the first viable idea that a group comes across is acceptable, but just as often is not. Decision-making by objective can generate acceptable solutions, they are not always the best or most creative solutions.

Uncertainty and Risk: Uncertainty refers to things that are unknown, and harder or impossible to judge. While Risk refers to things that are known and therefore can be predicted and acted upon. Thus, driving an automobile is a risk, we know or can calculate the general odds of having an accident; conversely, the possibility of dying of a genetic disease is an uncertainty since a person first has to know if they have a disease in order to know the risks. Additionally, not everyone who has the markers for a certain disease will contract it. Thus, just knowing you might have a particular disease is an uncertainty. However, once someone knows the odds of actually contracting a disease or their chance of developing symptoms, say, from a genetic test, or a family history, s/he can make choices based on “risk” rather than “uncertainty.” Obviously, for decision makers and communication professionals, risk is preferable to uncertainty, especially in times of crisis.

Clinical and Actuarial (Statistical) approaches (Dawes, Faust, & Meehl, 1989): Clinical approaches to decision making refer to interpretive or humanistic decisions made based on one’s perceptions or experience with others. Conversely, actuarial decisions are made based on probabilities and likelihoods based on data about a large number of cases that have been examined. Thus, a teacher who finds a student has cheated and brings him/her into the office to explain himself or herself, is exercising a clinical approach. The student makes his/her case and the teacher decides if the student’s excuses are compelling and makes a decision accordingly. Conversely, a teacher making the decision from an actuarial standpoint might simply penalize the student, knowing the data on how often students cheat, and the likelihood that the student might have done it before or might do it again. In general, research suggests that the actuarial approach is the most accurate and that people who think they have special people skills are actually fooling themselves.

Base Rate Problem: The base rate problem refers to the tendency when confronted with base rate or statistical data and individuated information, to focus on the individual information over the statistical information. In other words, personal contact trumps data. Consider the case of student admissions to a university. Some schools use only statistical information (GPAs, test scores, etc.) while other schools incorporate individuated information, such as from an interview or telephone call. The base rate problem is that once people have talked to someone or met them, that impression often takes precedence over contradictory data, and can result in a poor decision.