Every day, people are faced with numerous challenges which call upon them to make judgments and decision between the alternative solutions. Proper decision making for behavior change therefore needs one to have an excellent skills as far as decision making and wise judgments are concerned ( Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2015). People make judgments and decision in many aspects, political, economic, and social aspects. In all these areas, we can have fast intuitive decisions and more analytic decisions, which are slower and thoughtful. Good decisions have to be made even during uncertainties and there are factors that influence judgment and the decision-making processes, even if human beings are not perfect decision makers. Understanding the path that people follow to arrive at their final alternative solution for an issue has been an area which has captured the attention of many psychologists (Lerner et al., 2015). For this reasons, psychologist have noted that before a judgments and decision making, there are specific factors which influence an individual’s minds to make their judgment and decision or favor a specific alternative. Note, there are different models which people prefer when they are making a wise judgments and good decision for behavior change. Their reaction to the decision making and judgments made all depends on the result of the decision. All in all, all these depend on the type of factors which a person gives consideration when they are making a decision or judgments for a behavior change. In an art shell, Human beings make attempts to make good judgment and decisions (such as pondering through the cots and advantages of a choice) which influence their ultimate behavior in different situations. It is very important to recognize the systematic partialities that influence our judgment and decision making processes. It is at this point that strategies can be developed to come up with better decisions.
Factors Influencing Judgments and Decision Making
As noted earlier, decision making is paramount in human’s life. We are faced with a lot of issues which need us to make wise judgments and decisions in order to choose the best alternative out of the available options. In some scenarios, decision making seems to be simple since some decision or judgments are straightforward. However, in other circumstances, judgments and decision making tend to be complex given the similar and nearly equal alternative from which we have to choose the best. In whichever case, making the final judgments and decision to go for an alternative and leave out others depends on several factors. The first in the list is the Cognitive biases ( Shapiro &Stefkovich, 2016). These are the thinking patterns that have been shaped by our society and environment which influence our observations and generalizations concerning situations. They are observation and generalizations errors which tend to make our mind base our judgments on the inaccurate observations and faulty logic. They include "belief bias, the over-dependence on prior knowledge in arriving at decisions; hindsight bias, people tend to readily explain an event as inevitable, once it has happened; omission bias, generally, people have a propensity to omit information perceived as risky; and confirmation bias, in which people observe what they expectin observations.” During judgments and decision making, cognitive biases influence people by making them rely more on the expected observations ignoring the new observations which are critical in decision making. Other than the cognitive biases, there is past experience ( Govindan et al., 2015). Past experiences in life can determine present and future judgments and decisions on situations that come our way. According to the psychologist, most people make a decision based on what went right or wrong in the past similar experience. If in a similar case, they made a right judgment and decision based on a specific procedure, there are high chances that they will follow the same path to make the current decision ( Strandburg et al., 2015).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Other than the cognitive biases and past experience,Age and individual differences are critical aspects which influence our judgments and decision making. What has been noted by the most psychologists who have majored in this field is that as one's age advances, the decision making abilities of such an individual tend to reduce. They have noted that old people are affected by the past experience and cognitive biases that make them make more overconfident decision making. This makes them rely less on models of decision making and thus unable to apply strategies for making wise judgments and decision. Other than age, economic differences, social status, and other social privileges also have an impact on the different paths which are followed by people to arrive at a specific decision of their choice. Lastly, Personal relevance as well as a heightened commitment to coming up with a solution influence judgment and decision-making process. It determines the amount of time, money and effort being placed into the decision to which we feel we can commit ourselves. In many circumstances where decisions have been made, the psychologists have noted that at sometimes, the amount of money, time and investments made in a decision tend to differ based on the commitments to an alternative. If an individual feels heavily committed to a certain option, they will tend to over-invest in such alternatives than others ( Snyder &Diesing, 2015).
Framework for Judgments and Decision Making
Decision making framework is an employable tool which is designed to ensure that people make right choices as they make decision. A solid decision making framework ought to address some of the key issues which an individual faces on daily basis. Note, decision making framework don’t provide step by step checklist of the decision making process, but an overview of some of the key criteria which will assists an individual in making a wise judgments and informed decision ( Aharoni, 2015). A good framework that gives a platform for satisfactory judgment and decisions that are made fast and with ease is very important. Due to this reason therefore, one need to have a stable framework which guide his or her judgments on the way towards making an informed and right decisions.Each framework that is depended on determines the decision making process that one will adopt ( Stiegler& Tung, 2014). Note, some of these frameworks can be learnt so that one knows the appropriate judgments and best decisions to settle for in several situations. Some can be adapted to help in making the right decision by an individual. Decisions and judgments on many things in our life influence our behavior as portrayed. For this reason, we need to choose a decision framework which is ethically oriented and is logical based on the type of behavior we need to change or instill in our life. The decision making process is most often dependent on the kind of decision being made, which may determine the complexity or simplicity of the approach taken. Mostpeople rely on the convenience and speed that have to be considered to choose one recognized thing.
Reactions to Judgments and Decisions Made
The aim of judgments and decision making is to come up with a solution to our situations or the problem we face. The outcome of our decision can be positive or negative. After making the judgment and coming up with the decision, individuals are exposed to various reactions. The reaction thus depends on the result of the decision making process. Note, the result of our present judgments and decisions determine future decision-making process that will be considered in life. Note, one of the factors which affect the decision-making is the past experience. The reaction to the present result will thus have a critical impact on any decision; one will take in the future. One of such reactions can be regret and feelings of defeat or not being fulfilled with the decision made. In this situation, there is likeliness that what was expected when making a decision has not been achieved ( Beach & Lipchitz, 2017). The feeling of regret and remorsefulness after making a decision can imply that such an individual may not make a similar decision in the future. Also, People feeling remorseful after considering a decision because they think that they should have made a better judgment by examining more information, which they previously had ignored, and thinking over the pros and cons of every decision is also a possible reaction. In this case, there are high chances that such loopholes may be avoided in the next decision. On the other hand, some people experience satisfaction after making their decisions. It thus means that Positive and negative sides of each choice should be considered before finally settling at one. For satisfaction, one has to adopt an innovative judgment and decision-making approach. It is thus significant for an individual to understand a model of the decision-making process and follow it keenly so that he does not make blunders ( Morewedge et al., 2015). They should avoid regrets by ensuring that they use a correct framework for making a decision and also uses the best approach for the decision-making process. A goal and plan based strategy has always been a successful and sound model to adopt in the decision-making process as one focusses on goals.
Impacts of stress on decision making and judgment
Stress can be defined as a state of mental or emotional strain or tension emanating from compelling and adverse circumstances. Stress can change how people weigh risk and reward. It is surprising to learn that anxiety makes people focus on the way things could go right. Mostly, people associate stress with negative involvements but it sometimes results in positive experiences. Various experiences of stress can influence human decision making in intricate ways that are beyond the obvious expectations of a fight-or-flight ideal. The way individuals make a decision is influenced by their biological state. For example, sleep deprivation, hunger, and stress sway the process of decision-making. Hormones alter the way people make decisions. The fluctuation of different hormones in the body can result in stress (Salas, & Martin, 2017). As a result of variation of hormones such as cortisol and noradrenaline, they influence the process of decision-making.
Stress tends to narrow the focus of attention by shrinking a person's responsiveness. Stressful individuals may develop a habit of ignoring things or issues more often. This results in the production of inconclusive results thus affecting the quality of judgment. When people are under time pressure, they become more cautious and influence them to adopt a risk-avoiding behavior putting more weight on evading losses that may ensue. Individuals under stress assume an easier way of processing information which results in judgments and decisions that are not fully thought about. Due to hasty decisions or judgments that may arise from stress, the outcome may not be pleasing and sometimes it becomes too bad beyond a point correction. Nevertheless, limited focused attention caused by stress may be good in that, it can disregard information that is not essential and capture the key understanding of a situation in which a proper decision is made. In addition, some studies have shown that stress induces a tendency to offer solutions before the probable alternatives are explored. Therefore, it may hasten the way an individual makes decisions and the time is taken to make a judgment.
Impacts of depression on decision making and judgment.
Depression is a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of loss and interest. It affects the way people think, how they act and their sense of well-being. When depression gets into an extreme situation, it can get to the point where a person acts highly aggressive, hardly leaves their house, even becomes suicidal. Depression impedes some processes in the brain such as the ability to make decisions ( Garcia ‐ Retamero, Okan& Maldonado, 2015). This is because it takes away a person's intuition. Intuition helps people to unconsciously refer to previous experiences they have gone through, which makes them decide on what to do when faced with a task to think or tackle. The decision-making skills of a person suffering from depression are impaired by having a low intuition. Research shows that patients with depression have a high probability to ruminate that those who do not have. Rumination is a low level of thinking in which one results to another but never gives a solution or a conclusion. The feeling of sadness and anger that a person with depression may have becomes a hindrance to proper and correct judgment. Moods generate liking or disliking by activating negative or positive beliefs about the object or subject of judgment.
Sad moods tend to decrease forgetting and false memories. Individuals with happy moods show high numbers of false memories. People focus more on the negative impacts of depression in life. However, a person with depression is less likely to remember false memories than a person without. Therefore, the judgment of a person with depression may not be much influenced by the past. For example, if the depressed person comes across an individual who they quarreled with some years back, the judgment the person makes may not dwell necessarily on the memories but rather on the present. Although this may seem to be a good thing under certain circumstances, it may be a serious situation when it comes to learning and management. In addition, the ability for depressed individuals to make a decision is affected by lower general utility rate. Many actions seem to lose their worthiness because the effort and cost related to the actions exceed the expected rewards (Yamakawa, Ohira, Matsunaga &Isowa, 2016). For example, a person suffering from depression may choose not to attend a social event because the effort of spending money, leaving the house, or talking to people are overrun by the possibility of facing rejection. They fail to see the reward that comes out from socializing with getting to know new friends, doing physical exercise through walking and taking some time to entertain themselves with others. They tend to focus on the negative rather on the positive, and in this scenario, a proper judgment is impaired.
Impact of perception on decision making and judgment
Perception is the process by which a person organizes and interpret sensory stimuli. Since people use perception to think through different situations before them, how they perceive the object or subject in question influences the type of decision and judgment to be given. People selectively deduce what they see or hear on the basis of their background, interest, attitude, and experiences ( Wyer, 2014). Individuals have a tendency to be overly hopeful particularly when their interpersonal and intellectual capabilities are small. This kind of the wrong perception leads to wrong decision making. In anchoring bias perception, people focus on initial information at the point of commencement. The judgment that arises is that which is influenced by the mind from the first information it receives. In this situation, the results made are not the optimal decisions but rather a biased judgment. The personality of a person may create a perception of them. Personal traits like self-esteem and conscientiousness may alter the perception which ultimately affects the process of decision making. An example of a practical model is that of the employment interview. Early impressions are essential and effective. Perceptual judgments can be inaccurate and may result in erroneous decisions in selecting the required candidates for a job.
Impact of short-term and long-term memory systems on decision making
Short-term memory refers to the retention of data or information in a system after the data has been categorized and reached consciousness. For example, the ability of a person to remember a new telephone number with disruptions until it is stored in the long-term memory. Only small numbers of short-term memories are combined, and this depends on the attention and interest of a person on such information ( Namatēvs, 2015). If a quick decision is required in a particular situation, a person who has a poor short-term memory may not be able to make an informed decision without stressing the idea for a longer time. In addition, an individual who may lack a personal significance about certain information may end up making the wrong decision since the data they may have collected may not be adequate or accurate to produce a proper decision. Long-term memory system refers to permanent storage, management and retrieval of information for later use (Nofsinger, 2016) . Decision making can be defined as the process of selecting an action. Therefore, if the knowledge or skills required were acquired long time ago, a person with a good long-term memory is likely to make decisions that are correct based on the information that the individual is able to remember. There are judgments that may not offer a long waiting time for research or consultation, therefore, a person with poor long-term memory system may result in settling for a wrong decision due to the inability to have the correct information when they are needed.
Memory distortions
Memory distortions ensue when recovery of memories are inappropriate and data is evoked in a diverse way than what had happened at the first moment. A working memory is essential for reasoning and guidance of behavior and decision-making. Memories are reconstructed in different ways after events happen, which means that they can also be distorted. Factors that can distort memory include confabulation, source amnesia, schemas, hindsight bias, overconfidence effect and misinformation effect. Depression is associated with memory distortions. Depressed people produce errors that reflect their habit of interpreting ambiguity in negative ways.
Barriers to decision making and judgment
Low self-esteem is one of the barriers to making the right judgment. People who fail to believe in themselves look for the easy way out because they think of being unequal to a task with fellow peers (Farrelly, Lester, Birchwood, Marshall, Waheed&Thornicroft, 2016) . As a result, they grasp anything that sounds good to them without putting a reasonable thought into something. This renders them to make a wrong decision which would have been made better if they had a strong self-esteem which would give the confidence to compete with other peers. Romantic feelings is another barrier to decision making. The most level-headed and intelligent people fall into this trap. People may turn a blind eye to the available signs because they want to salvage a relationship from collapsing. Other barriers that may affect judgment and decision making include personal interest, life, and death situations, lack of enough facts about something or someone and having a pressure on time, therefore, resulting into guess without taking time to make a reasoned decision.
Impact of emotions on decision-making process and judgment
Anger is one of the emotions many people go through and understand best. Anger instills confidence where fear may raise hesitation. It increases the likelihood of people to confront risky ideas and makes them minimize how precarious the risk might be. Research shows that angry individuals may rely more on labels and are usually ready to act on anything compared to a person who is not angry. Anger tends to simplify the thinking of someone and it confuses more than it brings help (Lerner, Valdesolo&Kassam, 2015) . Therefore, a person ranging in anger may be confused and the judgment made can be misleading. Surprisingly, happiness may not be the solution to making proper judgments. Individuals who have positive moods may put more faith in the quantity of something and fail to focus on its quality. Studies have shown that people in positive moods can concentrate on likability or attractiveness of something failing to consider other factors, this may result in the making of undesirable decisions. Nevertheless, it does not mean that all negative emotions such as sadness, anger, and fury are bad as such. Sadness can be good at times since it fosters systematic thought. That said, it should be well known that too much sadness can trigger rumination. Which ultimately affects the ability of people to give judgment effectively.
In summary,decision-making process and judgment is a crucial aspect for one to feel successful and happy in life. Psychologists have noted that past experiences, cognitive preconceptions, age and individual distinctions influence judgment and decision-making process. It thus calls upon individuals to have effectivedecision-making skills and strategies to enhance theirability to make the correct judgment and make the appropriate choices. People need to note thatunderstanding the decision-making process is as important as understanding the final decisions made.
References
Aharoni, Y. (2015). The foreign investment decision process. In International Business Strategy (pp. 24-34). Routledge.
Beach, L. R., & Lipchitz, R. (2017). Why classical decision theory is an inappropriate standard for evaluating and aiding most human decision-making. Decision Making in Aviation , 85.
Farrelly, S., Lester, H., Rose, D., Birchwood, M., Marshall, M., Waheed, W., ...&Thornicroft, G. (2016). Barriers to shared decision making in mental health care: qualitative study of the Joint Crisis Plan for psychosis. Health Expectations , 19 (2), 448-458.
Ferrell, O. C., &Fraedrich, J. (2015). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases . Nelson Education.
Garcia ‐ Retamero, R., Okan, Y., & Maldonado, A. (2015). The impact of depression on self–other discrepancies in decision making. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making , 28 (1), 89-100.
Govindan, K., Rajendran, S., Sarkis, J., &Murugesan, P. (2015). Multi criteria decision making approaches for green supplier evaluation and selection: a literature review. Journal of Cleaner Production , 98 , 66-83.
Lerner, J. S., Li, Y., Valdesolo, P., &Kassam, K. S. (2015). Emotion and decision-making. Annual Review of Psychology , 66 .
Morewedge, C. K., Yoon, H., Scopelliti, I., Symborski, C. W., Korris, J. H., &Kassam, K. S. (2015). Debiasing decisions: Improved decision making with a single training intervention. Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences , 2 (1), 129-140.
Namatēvs, I. (2015). CONCEPT ANALYSIS OF COMPLEX ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS. In XVI Turiba University Conference Towards Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Europe: Challenges for Future Development (p. 225).
Nofsinger, J. R. (2016). The psychology of investing . Routledge.
Salas, E., & Martin, L. (2017). Decision-making under stress: Emerging themes and applications . Routledge.
Shapiro, J. P., &Stefkovich, J. A. (2016). Ethical leadership and decision making in education: Applying theoretical perspectives to complex dilemmas . Routledge.
Snyder, G. H., &Diesing, P. (2015). Conflict among nations: Bargaining, decision making, and system structure in international crises . Princeton University Press.
Stiegler, M. P., & Tung, A. (2014). Cognitive processes in anesthesiology decision making. Anesthesiology: The Journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists , 120 (1), 204-217.
Strandburg-Peshkin, A., Farine, D. R., Couzin, I. D., &Crofoot, M. C. (2015). Shared decision-making drives collective movement in wild baboons. Science , 348 (6241), 1358-1361.
Wyer Jr, R. S. (Ed.). (2014). Knowledge and memory: the real story: advances in social cognition (Vol. 8). Psychology Press.
Yamakawa, K., Ohira, H., Matsunaga, M., &Isowa, T. (2016). Prolonged Effects of Acute Stress on Decision-Making under Risk: A Human Psychophysiological Study. Frontiers in human neuroscience , 10 , 444.
