The Psychology of Decision Making

We like to believe that the important decisions we make are well thought out and rational. While this is true sometimes, many pitfalls can lead us to make error-ridden, biased decisions that we come to regret. This course is designed to both educate you about how we come to decisions and orient you to the psychological and environmental factors that can help or harm the quality of the decisions we make.

The course will first focus on the psychological processes that impact our decisions. We will look at both how the way we think affects our decisions as well as how our desires can guide us toward or away from good decision making practices. Second, we will examine how other people can impact the decisions we make. From being influenced in one-on-one interactions with people to being swayed by the social pressure of making decisions in a group, our decisions are often not solely our own. You'll learn how to benefit from these external influences when possible, and how to avoid being led astray when other people are trying to manipulate you. Finally, we will cover the way being in a group can help or harm the way you view and make decisions about other groups and their individual members.

Overall, this course will help you understand the decisions you make and give you simple, practical advice to improve the choices you make every day

Learning objectives

• Discuss the role of decision making in everyday life.
• Distinguish between intrapersonal and interpersonal influences on decision making.
• Describe the cognitive processes that affect decision making.
• Describe the motivational processes that affect decision making.
• Identify the ways decision making can be influenced by other individuals.
• Discuss how group dynamics affect decision making.
• Describe how intergroup relations can affect decision making.