Judgment and Decision Making, Essay Example

Reasons for Choosing Judgment and Decision Making

Judgment can be regarded as the final outcome of decision making process which is in turn an outcome of the cognitive processes (mental process). This is basically the making of choice between or among a number of alternatives. Fundamentally each decision making and judgment process leads to a final choice. Such output can either be an opinion or action of choice. Basically life is about decision making, for instance on a typical day of a study, he is supposed to make a decision on the time to wakeup, means of getting to schools, kind of lessons to attend, subjects to study and so on (Facione, 2007).

Basically decision making is quite different from problem analysis. Ideally, in decision-making, there must be established objectives for example the need for a student to attend classes. This set of objectives must be classified into some order of preference which gives the alternative actions. Each of the resulting alternatives is evaluated in light to the set objectives. An alternative that satisfies all the objectives qualifies to be a tentative decision. This tentative decision is again re-evaluated in order for it to generate maximum possible consequences. This prompts the taking of the appropriate decisive action hence judgment.

Information On Decision Making As an Example of Cognitive Process

There has been prolonged active research on human performance on judgment and decision making as a subject of cognitive processes. From psychological point of view, it is convenient to look individual decisions in the perspective of a set of preferences, needs a person has and the value attached. Therefore this process can be termed a rather long process incorporated within the environment.

From normative view point, decision process and judgment in general deals with the logic and rationality thus leading to an invariant choice of action to be taken. In a different platform decision making can be considered as a “problem solving activity” which comes to a close when the desired solution is reached at or achieved. It is therefore correct to make an assumption that decision making as a form of cognitive process is an emotional or reasoning process which can at times be irrational or rational and thus founded on tacit and explicit assumptions.

Logical and rational decision making is a critical element of science based studies and professions. In such fields, specialists’ often use their knowledge in a given area of specialization to make logical, rational and informed decisions. For example an engineer will require to make logical decisions based on his mathematical calculations and skills to select the appropriate material for a given construction purpose.

In some naturalistic based research methods, experts adopt an intuitive reasoning decision making rather than the convectional structured thinking process to analyze circumstance involving ambiguous, increased time pressure situations. Robust decision making brings together uncertainty with decision making process, while data decision analysis makes use of uncertainties with rationally and structurally justifiable decision making method (Plous, 2001).

Specific Applications of Decision Making

The components of judgment and decision making can be effectively applied in countering personal biasness in decision making. For instance people often show selective evidence search i.e. gathering facts and data that will only support preconceived decisions thus disregarded those facts that could generate different idea. Sometimes one may tend to be too defensive in a manner that will show some favoritism. There are cases where one stops searching for supporting facts once his desired outcome has been realized. This often deceives them that alternative realized will work (Levin, 2006).

Proper following of the set procedures of decision making helps one not to distort the memories of received facts in an attempt to make the desired facts appear more attractive than the rejected options.

Frequency of Application

Life is about making decision. I do not involuntarily happen to do daily activities. The essence of planning ahead of any activity is to allow one to make decision and of course suitable judgment in advance. As a student, first of there are those decision that I did once for instance deciding on the course and the institution to attend to.  This forms the infrequent decision making experiences. However there are daily regular decisions I normally undertake, for instance they type and nature of cloths trio put on, the type of food to take, my desired lectures to attend just to mention but a few (Ullman, 2006).

Lessons Learnt

I have been able to realize that is a process rather than an impromptu action. It involves identifying and effectively choosing the desired alternative. There are different types of decisions: “Decision whether” involves selecting the yes/no which precedes the alternative decision for instance should I go for a short call? “Decision which” involves the selection of one or several alternatives from a range of decision alternatives. This clearly depends on how good the given alternative satisfies the set of objectives initially outlined. “Contingent decisions” focuses on those decisions that are put pending until a given condition is met (Levin, 2006).

References

Facione, P. (2007). Thinking and Reasoning in Human Decision Making. The California Academic Press / Insight Assessment.

Levin, M. (2006), Composite Systems Decisions, New York: Springer.

Plous, S. (2001). The Psychology of Judgement and Decision Making New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003

Ullman, D. G. (2006), Making Robust Decisions London, UK: Trafford publishers.