What Leads to Bad Decision-Making

Table of ContentsView AllTable of ContentsMental ShortcutsPoor ComparisonsOptimism BiasOther FactorsHow to Make Better DecisionsFrequently Asked Questions

Table of ContentsView All

View All

Table of Contents

Mental Shortcuts

Poor Comparisons

Optimism Bias

Other Factors

How to Make Better Decisions

Frequently Asked Questions

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People make thousands of decisions each and every day, some big and some small. While some of these choices turn out great, chances are that not every decision you make will be a good one.

When you look back, you may wonder why youmade those decisions, particularly the ones that turned out poorly or led to feelings of regret. While it goes without saying that you will probably continue to makebad decisionsfrom time to time, you can gain a deeper understanding of the process behind these sometimes irrational choices.

Many factors contribute to poor choices. Understanding how these processes work and influence your thinking may help you to make better decisions in the future.

Decidophobia—Understanding the Fear of Making Decisions

If you had to think through every possible scenario for every possible decision, you probably wouldn’t get much done in a day. In order to make decisions quickly and economically, your brain relies on a number of cognitive shortcuts known asheuristics.

What Are Heuristics?Heuristics are mental rules or shortcuts that allow you to make judgments quite quickly and oftentimes quite accurately. But they can also lead to fuzzy thinking and poor decisions.

What Are Heuristics?

Heuristics are mental rules or shortcuts that allow you to make judgments quite quickly and oftentimes quite accurately. But they can also lead to fuzzy thinking and poor decisions.

One example is theanchoring bias.In many situations, people use an initial starting point as an anchor and then adjust it to yield a final estimate. For example, if you are buying a house and you know that homes in your target neighborhood typically sell for an average price of $375,000, you will probably use that figure to negotiate the purchase price of the home you choose.

Becoming more aware of how heuristics impact choices can help you avoid making bad decisions.

Comparison is one tool that people use when making decisions. Because you know what things typically cost, you can compare options to select the best price. You assign value based on how items compare to other things.

But what happens when you make poor comparisons? Or when the items you compare your options to are not representative or equal? For example, how far out of your way would you go to save $25?

This is an example of faulty comparison. Since you are comparing the amount you save to the amount you pay, $25 seems like much greater savings when compared against a $75 item than when contrasted with a $10,000 item.

When making decisions, people often make rapid comparisons without thinking about their options.

To avoid making bad decisions, relying on logic and thoughtful examination of the options can sometimes be more important than relying on your immediate “gut reaction.”

Surprisingly, people tend to have a natural-born optimism that can hamper good decision-making. In one study, researcher Tali Sharot asked participants what they thought the chances were of many unpleasant events, including being robbed or getting a terminal illness.After the people made predictions, the researchers told them the actual probabilities.

When people are told that the risk of something bad happening islowerthan expected, they tend to adjust their predictions to match the new information they learned. When they discover that the risk of something bad happening is muchhigherthan estimated, they tend to ignore the new information.

For example, if a person predicts that the odds of dying from smoking cigarettes is only 5%, but is then told that the real risk of dying is closer to 25%, they will likely ignore the new information and stick with their initial estimate.

Part of this overly optimistic outlook stems from a natural tendency to believe that bad things happen to others but not us. When people hear about something tragic or unpleasant happening to another person, they often look for things the person might have done to cause the problem. This tendency toblame the victimsprotects people from admitting that they are just as susceptible to tragedy as anyone else.

Sharot refers to this as theoptimism bias, or our tendency to overestimate the likelihood of experiencing good events while underestimating the likelihood of experiencing bad events.She suggests that this isn’t necessarily a matter of believing that things will magically fall into place, but insteadoverconfidence in our abilitiesto make good things happen.

Because you might be overly optimistic about your abilities and prospects, you are more likely to believe that your decisions are the best.

Experts might warn that smoking, being sedentary, or eating too much sugar can kill, but the optimism bias leads people to believe that it mostly killsotherpeople, not them.

Get Advice From The Verywell Mind PodcastThis episode ofThe Verywell Mind Podcastshares a tip that can help you make better decisions.

Get Advice From The Verywell Mind Podcast

This episode ofThe Verywell Mind Podcastshares a tip that can help you make better decisions.

Other Reasons for Bad Decision-Making

Several other factors can contribute to poor choices. Both good and bad decisions are susceptible to influences including:

RecapLimited attentional and cognitive resources can contribute to bad decision-making. Past experiences, individual factors, biases, and fatigue can also play a part.

Recap

Limited attentional and cognitive resources can contribute to bad decision-making. Past experiences, individual factors, biases, and fatigue can also play a part.

While some of the factors that lead to bad decision-making are difficult to eliminate, there are steps that you can take to help make better choices. Some strategies that can be helpful:

A Word From Verywell

While it is impossible to make perfect choices all of the time, there are strategies you can use to help minimize bad decision-making. Being aware of some of the many factors that contribute to bad decisions is one of the best ways to become a better decision-maker.

The areas of the brain that help regulate behavior and control decisions are not fully developed until people reach early adulthood. Because of this, teens tend to respond impulsively without fully considering the consequences of their choices.

Instead of ruminating over feelings ofregret, focus on practicing self-acceptance.Forgive yourselffor your mistake, accept that regret is sometimes a part of life, and focus on what you can learn from the mistake. Using those lessons to help you make better decisions can help youreframeyour regrets so that you feel grateful for your good choices and appreciative of the lessons you have learned.

Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias in which people favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. This bias leads people to ignore data that contradict their current thinking, contributing to distorted perceptions of reality. Instead of basing decisions on all of the facts, confirmation bias leads people to base their choices on limited, biased information.Learn More:What Is the Confirmation Bias?

Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias in which people favor information that confirms their existing beliefs. This bias leads people to ignore data that contradict their current thinking, contributing to distorted perceptions of reality. Instead of basing decisions on all of the facts, confirmation bias leads people to base their choices on limited, biased information.

Learn More:What Is the Confirmation Bias?

How to Be Less Indecisive

4 SourcesVerywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Bobadilla-Suarez S, Love BC.Fast or frugal, but not both: Decision heuristics under time pressure.J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2018;44(1):24-33. doi:10.1037/xlm0000419Tversky A, Kahneman D.Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.Science. 1974;185(4157):1124-1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124Sharot T, Korn C, Dolan RJ.How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of realityNature Neurosci. 2011;14(11):1475-9. doi:10.1038/nn.2949Bedwell SA.Do teenagers really make bad decisions?Front Young Minds. 2017;5:53. doi:10.3389/frym.2017.00053

4 Sources

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.Bobadilla-Suarez S, Love BC.Fast or frugal, but not both: Decision heuristics under time pressure.J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2018;44(1):24-33. doi:10.1037/xlm0000419Tversky A, Kahneman D.Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.Science. 1974;185(4157):1124-1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124Sharot T, Korn C, Dolan RJ.How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of realityNature Neurosci. 2011;14(11):1475-9. doi:10.1038/nn.2949Bedwell SA.Do teenagers really make bad decisions?Front Young Minds. 2017;5:53. doi:10.3389/frym.2017.00053

Verywell Mind uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read oureditorial processto learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Bobadilla-Suarez S, Love BC.Fast or frugal, but not both: Decision heuristics under time pressure.J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2018;44(1):24-33. doi:10.1037/xlm0000419Tversky A, Kahneman D.Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.Science. 1974;185(4157):1124-1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124Sharot T, Korn C, Dolan RJ.How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of realityNature Neurosci. 2011;14(11):1475-9. doi:10.1038/nn.2949Bedwell SA.Do teenagers really make bad decisions?Front Young Minds. 2017;5:53. doi:10.3389/frym.2017.00053

Bobadilla-Suarez S, Love BC.Fast or frugal, but not both: Decision heuristics under time pressure.J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn. 2018;44(1):24-33. doi:10.1037/xlm0000419

Tversky A, Kahneman D.Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases.Science. 1974;185(4157):1124-1131. doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124

Sharot T, Korn C, Dolan RJ.How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of realityNature Neurosci. 2011;14(11):1475-9. doi:10.1038/nn.2949

Bedwell SA.Do teenagers really make bad decisions?Front Young Minds. 2017;5:53. doi:10.3389/frym.2017.00053

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