decision making

11 articles · All tags

• What Is Groupthink and Why Do Groups Make Bad Decisions?
  Groupthink is a pattern in which a close-knit group suppresses doubt to reach quick agreement, a process Irving Janis described in 1972 and linked to poor decisions.
• Referendums and Direct Democracy: How Voters Decide Laws
  A referendum is a direct vote by citizens on a single question, such as a proposed law, and its result is binding or merely advisory depending on the country.
• The Barnum Effect: Why Vague Personality Readings Feel True
  The Barnum effect is the tendency to rate vague personality descriptions as accurate for oneself, which helps explain why cold readings and horoscopes feel personal.
• The Trolley Problem: Ethics, Variants, and Why It Matters
  The trolley problem asks whether to divert a runaway trolley to kill one person instead of five. Explore its variants, the ethical theories, and AI applications.
• The Monty Hall Problem: Why Switching Wins 2/3 of the Time
  In the Monty Hall problem, switching doors wins the car two-thirds of the time. See the counterintuitive probability explained step by step, with its assumptions.
• Present Bias and Hyperbolic Discounting
  Why the same one-day delay looms larger today than next month: preference reversals, β-δ models, and commitment devices.
• Mental Accounting
  Thaler's finding that people partition money into labeled mental accounts and spend, save, and regret differently by account.
• The Framing Effect
  Logically identical choices made differently depending on wording: gains invite caution, losses invite risk.
• Anchoring
  How an initial number — even an arbitrary one — pulls later numerical judgments toward itself, and why expertise barely helps.
• Opportunity Cost
  The value of the best alternative forgone when making a choice — the fundamental concept of economic scarcity.
• Loss Aversion
  The behavioral-economics finding that losses are felt more strongly than equivalent gains, formalized in prospect theory.