We are often facing difficulties about what to do or which path to take further in our lives, we are often afraid of the choices we make and what would they lead us to. But should we really be worried about them?
Decision-making is a cognitive task that is performed every day every time, throughout our waking hours life presents us with continuous series of choices: what to wear, what to eat, whether to attend class or meeting and so on- the list of everyday decisions varies person to person and is endless. Decision-making is also a psychological topic on which many researchers have done a thorough study. A decision varies from day to day, it even changes with our emotions and how we think, and research was conducted by psychologists about the relation between Emotions and Decisions.
For example; if a person is struggling with depression they make the decision to rest and stay in bed but if a person is happy they would be excited every day and would make the decision to socialize. Every time we don’t even notice but we make decisions on every smallest to the biggest topic. Making a decision is an unpredictable task as we don’t know what will be the outcome of our decisions, some decisions lead to positive outcomes some just leads to negative outcome or failure.
It is true that we make some bad decisions and everyone does that, this tends to be trapped in the bad decision as the name given by psychologists is known as escalation of commitment.
Escalating of commitment: why does it occur? – It is a wide and common thing. Study shows that it is done to several different factors. – Firstly, Rational reasons: we choose certain fields because we think that they will lead to favorable outcomes.
Secondly, Diffusion of responsibility: when people refuse their decision or make a bad decision.
Now the question comes what to do if we have already made a bad decision? : When things go wrong negative results occur, the thing is to continue and it might be just a temporary setback and it is common. Then the point comes after trying to fix everything and if it still doesn’t work out then change the plan and remember the most needed thing is to keep your calm and then try something new with all your effort and never lose hope because a bad decision making also comes under human nature and everyone does that.
Desicision-making occurs in real-world settings it is called Naturalistic Decision Making emphasizes the dynamic nature of decision-making and takes into account of modern decision environments – including potentially enormous costs of making bad decisions, in terms of both money and loss of life.
Decisions are made by every living species and decisions are taken or made by students, workers, parents, infants, adolescents, middle-aged people, and old people. It is the work which we all do till the time we die as our mind always performs the task of thinking the long way with it goes the task of thinking. Emotions and decision making: The magnifying effects of unexpected Loss and Gain; we focused on various factors that influence the decision-making process. One aspect of decision-making that we have not considered yet is, how people feel about the outcomes of decisions they make.
As you know from our own reactions outcomes are highly influenced by the way they turn out to be. When desirable outcomes flow from a decision, we tend to feel happy. Conversely, undesirable outcomes lead us to feel disappointed and even angry. However, other factors like thinking again play a role here.
Our reactions to certain outcomes may also be influenced by our expectations – what we anticipate will happen and by the comparisons, we make between actual outcomes and other outcomes that could have occurred, a tendency referred to as counterfactual thinking or we can say effects of considering ‘What might have been many psychologists like Miller and McFarland have studied about it in 1987.
Engaging in counterfactual thinking can produce many other effects; depending upon the outcome can either boost or depress the person’s mood, and they experience strong feelings of regret, dissatisfaction, or envy. Conceptual thinking occurs in a wide range of situations.
Major Aim: Does everything tell above about negative outcomes so should we just stop taking risks? Should we stop manifesting and hoping for certain outcomes? Or should we never think of winning? Or should we never be confident about certain tasks?
All of the above doesn’t mean that we should be afraid to take our own decisions but the point which is tried to be portrayed is that outcomes would occur of every single of our actions and decisions but that doesn’t mean that we should just stop hoping for the best, failures and winning is the part of our life, but we fail due to some reason we should try to unlock the next best opportunity. And yes we should hope for the best but we should even keep in mind that there can be circumstances that might not favor our thinking. And we should be well prepared for that.
