Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World Essay

Decision Making and Rationality in the Modern World - Essay Example Cognitive psychologists define ‘decision making’ as a mental task that occurs in weighing relevant information or selecting among options. However, decision making is highly vulnerable to failure due to individuals’ cognitive design (Hardman 2009, 117). Primarily, individuals often evaluate the probability of a situation by the simplicity or convenience with which models can be created in mind. The manner an issue is constructed usually radically influences individuals’ judgments. Individuals perceive, understand, and commit to memory information that confirms their original beliefs (Shapira 2002, 4). Individuals are also hesitant to discard a choice once they have put too much time, effort, and resources in it. Individuals are also very much inclined to have improperly high regard for their skills and knowledge. Â  Cognitive psychologists from different schools of thought have the same opinion that individuals have an inadequate capacity for performing mental activities. Individuals can only hold a limited amount of information and they can process it in sequence, and retain in short-term memory (Plous 1993, 13). This essay tries to illustrate some of the factors that hinder good decision making, namely, (1) cognitive dissonance, (2) memory bias and hindsight bias, (3) context dependence.