Psychology of Decision Making | Tips to Make Better Decisions

Everyday humans make thousands of decisions. Decision making is our basic aspect of human life. It includes making small decisions like what to eat in breakfast and life altering decisions like choosing career path or a life partner. The field of psychology offers a deep well of inside how we make these decisions, what factors influence our choices and why do we make sometimes irrational or emotionally driven decisions. It also helps mechanics behind decision making, emotional influences and more.

Psychology help us how we can make better our decision making abilities. The process of decision making is coordinate by cognitive functions like attention, memory, reasoning and problem solving. Psychology describes two types of cognitive processes in decision making;

1. Fast, automatic and emotional decisions. This type of decisions are useful for everyday life and quick judgements but they have biasis and errors.

2. Slow, deliberate, analytical and logical decisions. These decisions are more accurate and requires more cognitive efforts. They are often reserved for complex decisions.Emotions play a significant role in decision making. Emotions are closely linked to the decision making centers of brain. Our decisions do not occur in a vacuum. Social culture and environment significantly affect our choices that we make in our daily life. Sometimes peer pressure, social norms authority figures affect our decisions without our awareness.

Decision making is sometimes tough process and requires mental energy. It leads to decision fatigue. The quality of decision making decreases due to over use of cognitive resources. To overcome this fatigue some individuals adopt some routines or avoid less important decisions. Steve Jobs is famous for the same outfit every day to preserve mental energy for more critical decisions. Individuals make better long term decisions with higher self control and hence experience greater satisfaction in life.

Improving decision making leads to better outcomes in both personal and professional life. This will happen by understanding the psychology of decision making. Here are some strategies to improve the decision making;

1. Take time to gather information and weigh options

2. Recognize the common biases

3. Tools like cost benefit analysis and decision trees will clarify complex choices

4. Knowing what you want to achieve in life will help to align your decisions

5. Practicing mindfulness and being present will enhance focus and self awareness

                We can never be entirely free from errors. Understanding the mechanism behind our choices will help us to make more informed, accurate and effective decisions. As we learn more about the brain and behavior we get more tools to decide better.