Avoid Falling into These Common Decision Traps

Life is made up of a handful of critical decisions, hundreds of important decisions and literally thousands of minor decisions.   Taking the time to develop good decision-making skills is well worth the investment.  We will cover the topic regularly in the Next Brain Blog.

One proven way to enhance your decision-making skill is to actively manage the traps (also known as cognitive biases) that we can fall into.    The Hidden Traps in Decision Making is an easy-to-read primer filled with practical advice.  The traps or cognitive biases it covers include, for example:

• ANCHORING:  Overemphasizing the first information you recieve
• STATUS QUO:  Selecting alternatives that best fit what you are currently doing
• SUNK COST:  Making decisions that support past decisions
• CONFIRMING EVIDENCE: Seeking and accepting information that supports your current or preferred point of view.

We all have these tendencies.  They cannot be eliminated, they are part of how our brain works. We have them because they provide strong advantages in certain circumstances.  The key is to be aware of them and take simple steps to make sure they don’t trap us into making poor decisions.  For example, one way to avoid the confirming evidence trap is to be sure you always find an equal amount of evidence for and against your prevailing point of view. Or ask another to scout the opposing evidence that you might be biased against seeing as relevant.

Turns out we are loaded with dozens of biases that impact how we learn, perceive the world,  make decisions, socially interact and perform other cognition-intense tasks.  There will be a lot to blog about.  Look forward to comments on how you have learned to manage decision-making or other types of cognitive biases.