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Decision Making
Introduction
Humans make decisions everyday. In fact, the average person makes about 35,000 decisions a day. Because of this, it is imperative for people to be able to make good decisions in order for them to do well in life. However, this can be difficult, due to one major issue when it comes to making a “good decision”: decision bias. Decision bias is when irrelevant or illogical information affects a person’s ability to make decisions, which can lead to them not making good decisions. One example of this is the 2022 Fifa World Cup many people have biases when it comes to the teams that they cheer for. Maybe people like the colors of the team, maybe they were born in that city or country, or maybe the person who they think is the best in the world plays for that specific team. There are so many factors that people could take into consideration that would make them biased towards a subject. This logic also applies in other aspects of life. Take into account a person who has specific views on left handed people. They may think that left handed people are significantly better than right handed people, in turn clouding their judgment on all right handed people that they meet. While this concept of biases may be unfair in the real world, it happens all the time. I bet most of the 35,000 decisions that people make each day will contain some sort of bias because that is just the way that humans function. In this essay, I will be discussing five different types of bias, how they affect my current ISP, and how I can overcome the biases to make my project better.
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation bias is seen as only looking for evidence that paints a positive picture of what they believe, while ignoring all of the negatives about a certain topic. Confirmation bias is essentially only choosing to take into account things that support a person's own opinions. People who have confirmation bias may find it difficult to believe truths because of their own opinions on topics. An example of this being debates between who is the better football player, Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. People form opinions early on about who they think is better, and it is very hard to shake that opinion that they have.I think that something that will make our ISP difficult is the willingness of our members to take in information. For example, any websites that we use for evidence that might not be fully accurate. We should have multiple people fact check everything in order to make sure that we have the right information and a clear understanding on what is good and bad so that there is little to no bias in what is being included in the project.
Testimony Bias
Testimony bias is the result of using cues from specific questions or phrases to determine a person's answer. This can occur when people can not recall information surrounding a specific situation--leading to a focus on the diction of a question in order to determine their answers. This form of bias can occur within our ISP through poor testing. Say one version of the project works better, but hasn’t been properly documented, a person’s memory could lead them to using a project that looks better, but performs worse because of the appeal of certain features. A way that we can combat this in our ISP is by properly documenting all of our data in each of our designs.
Bandwagon Bias
The bandwagon effect is when a person changes their behaviors to match that of others because “everyone else is doing it”(Cherry, 2020). A person who is considered a “bandwagon” tends to side with everyone else because of the sheep mentality--where a person follows the majority. People who are under the bandwagon effect typically make decisions based on the majority, rather than their rationale. However, a way to combat the bandwagon effect is by enforcing different opinions against the majority because it could sway a person’s mind. In order to avoid the bandwagon bias in our ISP, we could create different scenarios and ideas on our own and eventually group together and discuss what we have planned in order to avoid people getting set on ideas before anybody else has come up with anything.
Overconfidence Bias
Overconfidence occurs when a person believes in themselves too much, often leading to them dismissing others opinions because they are too confident in their own. This confidence is usually caused by the ability of a person to answer hard questions in a different subject that is not relevant to the current situation at hand. This leaves people's opinions subject to be dismissed no matter how important or good their ideas are. A way that overconfidence could negatively affect our ISP is through the dismissal of our teammates' ideas that could ultimately improve our project as a whole. This could be avoided through team accountability, meaning that each of us holds a standard to allow everyone the opportunity to express their ideas.
Habit Bias
The last bias that I am going to discuss is habit bias. Habit bias occurs because of what someone knows has worked before. For example if a person solved a physics problem using energy rather than forces, they may be more inclined to use energy again when a similar problem appears. This way of thinking goes fantastically with the quote “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The way that this bias may appear is during the optimization process of our ISP. In order to fix this, we need to be open minded and do a lot of research over certain topics and what makes certain processes faster. That will ensure that our ISP becomes the best that it can be.
Cherry, K. (2020, April 28). The bandwagon effect is why people fall for trends. Verywell Mind. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-bandwagon-effect-2795895
Noor, I. (2020, June 10). How confirmation bias works. Confirmation Bias: Examples & Observations - Simply Psychology. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/confirmation-bias.html
David, A. (1998). A Taxonomy of Decision Biases. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=c58cca5c8e8774eb5b17ac3159914d1f1357a014
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