1. DECISION MAKING: CHOICES AND CHANCES
Are too many choices a bad thing? Perhaps we like to have choices in life, but at a certain point choice overload might make us indecisive at best and unhappy at worst

2. ARE WE RATIONAL DECISION-MAKERS?
Simon’s theory of bounded rationality says that when we make decisions we are only able to focus on a few aspects of the options involved and often end up making irrational decisions → our assessments of options’ attributes are influenced by emotion → we prefer certainty over uncertainty → our judgments are swayed by extraneous factors such as brand-name and price

3. DELIBERATION OR INTUITION?
Should we rely on careful, deliberate thought for complex decisions and intuition for more simple ones or vice versa? → though not without its critics, studies have shown that it is more advantageous to use intuition (unconscious thought/incubation) for complex decisions

4. HEURISTICS: INTUITION GLAD OR GONE MAD?
The availability heuristic involves estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; the first thing that “pops into your mind” we assume to be most common/probable → we are often enticed by (winning at gambling) or fear (terrorist attacks) unlikely occurrences

5. HEURISTICS: INTUITION GLAD OR GONE MAD?
The representativeness heuristic involves judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they seem to represent/match a particular prototype → we base many of our decisions on representativeness, ignoring other relevant details

6. HEURISTICS: INTUITION GLAD OR GONE MAD?
→ in estimating probabilities, we ignore base rates – statistics, logic, rationality – and resort to mental representations

7. COMMON PITFALLS IN DECISION MAKING
1. The gambler’s fallacy makes us overestimate the likelihood of an event if it hasn’t happened recently

8. COMMON PITFALLS IN DECISION MAKING
2. A reflection of the availability heuristic, we often overestimate the improbable

9. COMMON PITFALLS IN DECISION MAKING
3. Due to confirmation bias, we seek out information that confirms and supports our decisions, but not information that disproves it

10. COMMON PITFALLS IN DECISION MAKING
4. Framing: the way an issue is ‘framed’ or posed can have dramatic effects on decisions – would you rather be told 10% of the patients who have had the surgery you will undergo have died, or that 90% have survived? → In Europe, organ donors can opt out and the rate of donations is almost 100%; in the U.S. we can opt in and the rate is about 25%