Understanding and Improving Decision Making

Catalog description

Our lives are built upon countless decisions, some small (What am I going to wear to class?) and some very consequential (Should I accept this job offer?). This course will cover the basics in the science of decision making, exploring the ways in which people tend to make decisions, the ways people ought to make decisions, and common discrepancies between the two. Students will learn about rational models of decision making and the reasons why people's decisions often stray from these models. Students will explore different modes of decision making, such as intuition vs. deliberation, and will discuss various pitfalls (i.e., predictable biases) associated with the use of common decision making strategies or rules of thumb. Many of these topics will bediscussed in terms of their organizational consequences, such as the effects of different decision making strategies and heuristics on the fairness and objectivity of hiring decisions. Most importantly, students will leave the class with a toolkit to avoid errors and biases in their own decisions.