The Psychology Behind Decision-Making

@Quill Adventurer
ILLUMINATION
Published in
2 min readFeb 16, 2024

The simplest of decisions made in our lives are often influenced by a complete myriad of factors. In many cases it could be something just as simple as picking out a blue shirt over a white one, or a cup of coffee over a tea. It happens to us all the time, but what are some of the critical processes which help us influence these decisions? …

Photo by Arno Senoner on Unsplash

Social Influence

Especially through the push of social media, the conception of social influence has coupled onto becoming an increasingly common trait. More often, this comes through as a result of peer pressure, or even in regards to ‘the new trend’. It’s quite surprising how our brains will sway into wearing something cool as a means to impress someone, rather than what you consider your ‘true’ style to be …

Cognitive Biases

The idea of cognitive bias usually results in repeated misjudgment over something. Commonly, it’s a result of ‘bias’, utilizing what you want to think or know, not the reality.

A further example is known as the anchoring effect, where you constantly rely upon the first set of information you see, leading to biased ideas. A great example includes the price of objects — if you were to see a laptop for $2000 and then one for $1000, you would look at the ($2000 laptop) and consider the $1000 one as a good deal. Though in many terms, this not may be the truth.

Emotional Decisions

Emotional decisions like happiness, fear and anger can all help us to influence our own decisions. Positive emotions are down to lead someone through a healthier state of growth and risk-taking, whilst negative emotional behaviour, associated with the likes of anger, could very much lean in the opposite way.

In many terms, it is fascinating how our brains work during the psychological thinking of our decisions in life. Those key decisions very much dictate our path and future as they are some of the most valuable settlements our brains take.

Thank You So Much For Reading,

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