Understanding Decision Making: Influence of Attitudes and Information Diversity

As humans, would like to think we are rational in our decisions, especially for major decisions that will affect our lives or the lives of others in the long run. Nonetheless all decisions form from the foundations of our attitudes where they can stem from internal or external factors.

These foundations help us process the information we gather or receive to make the decision but may be processed with errors through jumping to conclusions from our System 1 or from misinformation from our external sources. Maintaining a diversity of information seeking may help with the effects of falling into the danger of error of heuristic. One solution stated by Schwartz in “The Paradox of Choice” is to include social interactions in the information gathering. With maintain a diversity, there is a higher involvement and getting the mind out of System 1 and into System 2.

One drawback of social interaction in our information gathering is if our sources are not diverse and only serve the affective attitudes that could lead to error. If the tendency is to no go beyond the scope of friends that have the same taste and views or if a misinformation

This can create conflict when there is sunk cost or there was no cost at all. The example given by Schwartz with the two groups choosing what options to have in the vehicles parallel my recent car experience. I had done an extensive research of what type of vehicle I was to purchase and what options I was to have. I would only have the basic with automatic windows. On one test drive I drove a car with rearview camera, Bluetooth audio and adjustable volume on the steering wheel and I was pleased. Afterwards any other test-drive I felt something missing if those items were not in the car, they were now in my “must have list” for the price I had seen on the previous