Decision Making: Choosing Among Options

DECISION MAKING :CHOOSING AMONG  OPTIONS

Judgment and reasoning allow us to expand our knowledge in important ways—when, for example, we draw some new conclusion from our experiences, or when we deduce a novel claim from our other beliefs. A third type of thinking, in contrast, is more closely tied to our actions. This is the thinking involved in decision making

We make decisions all the time—some trivial (which brand of toilet paper should you buy?) and some deeply important (should you get that surgery, or not?). Some deci-sions get made over and over (should you go back to that Mexican restaurant one more time?) and some are made just once (should you get a job when you finish school, or seek out some further education?). Researchers have proposed, however, that all of these decisions get made in same way, with the same sort of processes, and so we obvi-ously need to take a close look at what those processes involve.