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Are You Scared of Your Next Decision?

Posted on by by Posted in Creative Thinking, Risk and Uncertainty, Stress Management

Scared of Your Next Decision?

Edvard Munch (1893): The Scream. Oil, tempera & pastel on cardboard. [Image rights in the public domain.]

Tonight will be a scary night for the bravest of us, with countless children roaming the streets, high on sugar, threatening to knock on our very doors.

However, even today, our most crippling fears probably come from within. Are you scared of your next decision? Afraid of making the wrong choice? Funnily enough, while dogs and – some say – children can smell our fear; on our own we’re not always very good at recognizing when and why we’re scared.

Here’s how you can recognize whether your decision scares you:

  • You avoid making the decision altogether, for example by procrastinating or by shifting the responsibility to others.
  • You get overly emotional about your decision. Maybe you get angry or burst into tears when others are bringing up uncomfortable truths about your situation? Such emotional outbursts are effective ways of shutting down a conversation, and they can be warning signs that your fears are holding you back from thinking and acting in the best way.
  • You keep investing into previous mistakes. This is also known as “escalating commitment”. When coping with poor outcomes of our previous choices, it is tempting to dig in our heels and devote even more resources to our current path, in the hope of somehow making it work. But sometimes, making the best decision for the future requires that we admit having made a mistake in the past. This is not easy: even admitting mistakes just to ourselves takes a lot of courage, but it can open the door to a new and better direction.

If any of these points ring true, take it as a warning sign that you might need more courage to approach your decision.

How to become a braver decision maker

The simplest way to get more courage is to take responsibility for your decision process, even if the outcomes are not all in your control. Follow a decision process that is in line with your values. Without being able to predict the future, we will never have a guarantee that good decisions will lead to good consequences, but there is plenty of evidence showing that a good decision process is indeed more likely to result in better outcomes. Since you will make many decisions over your lifetime, you can therefore be assured that if you follow a good decision process throughout your life, your decision outcomes will be better overall.

Four steps to tackle your decisions fearlessly:

1) Commit to a value-driven rational decision process. This does not guarantee good outcomes, but it does make them more likely.

2) Ask yourself: Which of my values matter for this decision? In other words, what are my personal criteria as to whether the outcome will be “good” or “bad”?

3) Think: What can I do that best fulfills all those values? (Think beyond your initial ideas. If necessary, use tools/visuals/charts etc to evaluate your options – I’m not getting started on all this here, but you know who to ask if you want to know more about creative thinking and evaluating options.)

4) Act. Knowing that you’ve made the best decision you possibly could have with your current knowledge – a decision that is based on your values, rather than on fear – will empower you to act with confidence.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Selected References:
Anderson, B., Hahn, D., & Teuscher, U. (2013). Heart and Mind: Mastering the Art of Decision Making. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Aschenbrenner, K. M., Jaus, D., & Villani, C. (1980). Hierarchical goal structuring and pupils’ job choices: testing a decision aid in the field. Acta Psychologica, 45, 35–49.
Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 938–956.
Dean, J. W., & Sharfman, M. P. (1996). Does Decision Process Matter? A Study of Strategic Decision-Making Effectiveness. The Academy of Management Journal, 39(2), 368–396.
Herek, G. M., Janis, I. L., & Huth, P. (1989). Quality of U.S. Decision Making during the Cuban Missile Crisis: Major Errors in Welch’s Reassessment. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 33(3), 446–459.
Keeney, R. L. (1996). Value-Focused Thinking: A Path to Creative Decision Making. Harvard University Press.

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Decision Skills Matter

Posted on by by Posted in Financial Decisions, Health Decisions, Intuition, Risk and Uncertainty

To what extent do decision skills matter in real live? Do these skills actually lead to better decision outcomes and fewer unpleasant life events?
Decision Skills Matter
Or, more specifically: do people who perform better on hypothetical decision tasks also make better real-world decisions, to the extent that they experience better outcomes over the course of their lives?

Let’s take a step back. Based on all the different theories of what counts as a “rational” choice, we know that some people perform better in the kinds of choices that are typically presented in research studies. There are people, for example, who are less affected than others by the way information is presented to them (in other words, they are better able to resist framing effects). Or, while most people are overconfident most of the time, some people actually have a pretty accurate level of confidence into their own judgments. There are also people who are better able to abandon a bad plan that involves sunk costs, while others are more prone to keep throwing good money after bad. We also know that these decision skills are related to other cognitive abilities, and that they can be taught and improved with explicit instructions and practice. (Check out the list of references below for just a sample from a large body of research.)

The question is though: do people who perform better on those sorts of tasks also make better real-world decisions? And most importantly, can those better decisions be measured by better outcomes? Are “skillful” decision-makers, as defined by those measures, perhaps better able to avoid bad life events?

Apparently, the answer is a robust YES, across different ways of measuring the quality of decisions and the quality of decision outcomes.

For example, in one study, the researchers gave people hypothetical tasks to measure their decision skills. The test they used is called A-DMC, for Adult Decision Making Competence, and it measures skills such as resistance to framing effects, ability to disregard sunk costs, over- and under-confidence, or the ability to process complex information in a decision.

The researchers then asked people about a variety of stressful life events that could result from poorly made decisions. The events ranged from serious (declaring bankruptcy, being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes) to minor (getting blisters from sunburn, throwing out groceries you bought because they went bad). Other examples of stressful life events included missing a flight, getting kicked out of a bar, having your driver’s license revoked, or having spent a night in a jail cell.

It turned out that people who performed better in hypothetical decision tasks (as seen in high A-DMC scores) were indeed less likely to have experienced such negative life events.

Other research has also linked performance on decision-making competence tasks to better real-life outcomes, such as fewer suspensions among students.

It is important to note that not everyone is dealt the same hand when it comes to avoiding stressful life events. For example, people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds are exposed to more negative life events. Also, poor decision outcomes are more common among younger people. However, the relationship between decision-making competence and better decision outcomes was still significant even after the researchers controlled their analysis for socio-economic status and age.

Granted, even the soundest decision-making processes cannot guarantee good outcomes. Given all the uncertainties in life, unpleasant surprises are often inevitable, even to skilled decision makers. However, what these studies confirm is that across time, people, and decisions, good decision processes predict good decision outcomes on average.

After knowing this, it bears repeating: decision-making competence can be taught and improved. Several independent research groups across different countries, using different types of interventions at schools, have shown clear improvements in decision skills as a result of targeted decision education.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR

Selected References:
Blais, A.-R., Thompson, M. M., & Baranski, J. V. (2005). Individual differences in decision processing and confidence judgments in comparative judgment tasks: The role of cognitive styles. Personality and Individual Differences, 38(7), 1701–1713.
Brady, S. S., & Matthews, K. A. (2002). The influence of socioeconomic status and ethnicity on adolescents’ exposure to stressful life events. Journal of Pediatric Psychology, 27(7), 575–583.
Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 938–956.
Del Missier, F., Mäntylä, T., Hansson, P., Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Nilsson, L.-G. (2013). The multifold relationship between memory and decision making: An individual-differences study. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 39(5), 1344–1364.
Jacobson, D., Parker, A., Spetzler, C., Bruine de Bruin, W., Hollenbeck, K., Heckerman, D., & Fischhoff, B. (2012). Improved learning in U.S. history and decision competence with decision-focused curriculum. PloS One, 7(9), e45775.
Levin, I. P., Gaeth, G. J., Schreiber, J., & Lauriola, M. (2002). A New Look at Framing Effects: Distribution of Effect Sizes, Individual Differences, and Independence of Types of Effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 88(1), 411–429.
Lui, V. W. C., Lam, L. C. W., Luk, D. N. Y., Chiu, H. F. K., & Appelbaum, P. S. (2010). Neuropsychological performance predicts decision-making abilities in Chinese older persons with mild or very mild dementia. East Asian Archives of Psychiatry, 20(3), 116–122.
Marin, L. M., & Halpern, D. F. (2011). Pedagogy for developing critical thinking in adolescents: Explicit instruction produces greatest gains. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 6(1), 1–13.
Parker, A. M., Bruine de Bruin, W., & Fischhoff, B. (2015). Negative decision outcomes are more common among people with lower decision-making competence: an item-level analysis of the Decision Outcome Inventory (DOI). Cognition, 6, 363.
Parker, A. M., de Bruin, W. B., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Maximizers versus satisficers: Decision-making styles, competence, and outcomes. Judgment and Decision Making, 2(6), 342–350.
Reyna, V. F., & Farley, F. (2006). Risk and Rationality in Adolescent Decision Making Implications for Theory, Practice, and Public Policy. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 7(1), 1–44.
Stanovich, K. E. (1999). Who Is Rational?: Studies of Individual Differences in Reasoning. Psychology Press.
Stanovich, K. E., Grunewald, M., & West, R. F. (2003). Cost–benefit reasoning in students with multiple secondary school suspensions. Personality and Individual Differences, 35(5), 1061–1072.
Stanovich, K. E., & West, R. F. (2008). On the relative independence of thinking biases and cognitive ability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(4), 672–695.
Teuscher, U. (2003). Evaluation of a Decision Training Program for Vocational Guidance. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, 3(3), 177–192.

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Decision Styles: Are Some Better Than Others?

Posted on by by Posted in Intuition

I was excited to find a new study about decision styles and how they relate to decision qualities.

We know that people have different ways of approaching decisions – or different decision styles. Several studies have suggested the existence of five distinct styles:

baddecisions

1) Rational
An example item in a questionnaire would be:
“I make decisions in a logical and systematic way.”

2) Intuitive
E.g.,“When I make decisions, I tend to rely on my intuition.”

3) Avoidant
E.g.,“I avoid making important decisions until the pressure is on.”

4) Dependent
E.g.,“I rarely make important decisions without consulting other people.”

5) Spontaneous
E.g.,“I generally make snap decisions.”

One big question is: are some of these styles better than others? Or in other words, can decision styles distinguish between “good” decision makers and “bad” decision makers? It would be interesting to know, for example, if decision makers with a more “rational” style generally make better or worse decisions than people with a more “intuitive” style.

A recent study by Nicole Wood and Scott Highhouse attempted to answer exactly this question. They found some interesting answers indeed:

  • While intuitive decision-makers rated themselves as the best decision makers, their peers did not agree with those high opinions. It was on the contrary the rational decision style that was related to higher quality decisions, when the decisions were judged by others, rather than the decision makers themselves.
  • None of the other decision styles (avoidant, dependent, or spontaneous) explained much difference in decision qualities at all. Only the avoidant style was somewhat related to low self-ratings, but with a small effect size, and none of those decision styles were related to peer ratings in any way.

Additionally, the researchers looked at personality styles, which have been much more extensively studied in the past already, and are at this point better understood than decision styles. They found that conscientiousness, as a personality trait, is also a characteristic of people who are judged as good decision makers by their peers.

To put this most recent study into perspective: the new findings line up well with previous research supporting the idea that careful decision processes lead to good outcomes. For example, it is already known that careful decision makers are more satisfied with their careers, and that they perform better in school. There are also several studies showing that rational thinkers are less likely to be tricked by typical biases and errors that most people fall for.

Taken together, there is a growing body of research suggesting that careful decision-making predicts decision quality in a number of contexts, and that a rational decision style is effective and beneficial in many areas of life.

by Ursina Teuscher (PhD), at Teuscher Decision Coaching, Portland OR


Sources, references and more info:
More information about the measure “General Decision Making Style” (GDMS) on the website of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making (JDM)
Baiocco, R., Laghi, F., & D’Alessio, M. (2009). Decision-making style among adolescents: Relationship with sensation seeking and locus of control. Journal of Adolescence, 32, 963–976.
Crossley, C., & Highhouse, S. (2005). Relation of job search and choice process with subsequent satisfaction. Journal of Economic Psychology, 26, 255–268.
Curseu, P. L., & Schruijer, S. G. L. (2012). Decision styles and rationality: An analysis of the predictive validity of the general decision-making style inventory. Educational and Psychology Measurement, 72, 1053–1062.
Denes-Raj, V., & Epstein, S. (1994). Conflict between intuitive and rational processing: When people behave against their better judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 819–829.
Epstein, S., Donovan, S., & Denes-Raj, V. (1999). The missing link in the paradox of the Linda conjunction problem: Beyond knowing and thinking of the conjunction rule, the intrinsic appeal of heuristic processing. Personality and Social Psychological Bulletin, 25, 204–214.
Epstein, S., Lipson, A., Holstein, C., & Huh, E. (1992). Irrational reactions to negative outcomes: Evidence for two conceptual systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 328–339.
Epstein, S., Pacini, R., Denes-Raj, V., & Heier, H. (1996). Individual differences in intuitive–experiential and analytical–rational thinking styles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 390–405.
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A.-G., & Buchner, A. (2007). G⁄Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39, 175–191.
Goldberg, L. R., Johnson, J. A., Eber, H. W., Hogan, R., Ashton, M. C., Cloninger, C. R., et al. (2006). The International Personality Item Pool and the future of public- domain personality measures. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 84–96.
Kirkpatrick, L. A., & Epstein, S. (1992). Cognitive-experiential self-theory and subjective probability: Further evidence for two conceptual systems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 534–544.
Loo, R. (2000). A psychometric evaluation of the General Decision-Making Style Inventory. Personality and Individual Differences, 29, 895–905.
Scott, S. G., & Bruce, R. A. (1995). Decision-making style: The development and assessment of a new measure. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 55, 818–831.
Wood, N. L., & Highhouse, S. (2014). Do self-reported decision styles relate with others’ impressions of decision quality? Personality and Individual Differences, 70, 224–228.

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