How You Decide: The Science of Human Decision Making

Course Overview

Join an award-winning professor and discover the surprising results from the field of decision science to learn how to make better decisions in all aspects of life. Thousands of times each day, even tens of thousands by some estimates, we are presented with choices that require a decision. Over millennia, philosophers, theologians, and mathematicians have all weighed in on the topic, and in recent centuries, economists, psychologists, and sociologists have joined the investigation.

Now, you can learn what science has revealed about how we make choices. In How You Decide: The Science of Human Decision Making, Professor Ryan Hamilton, Associate Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, uses research revealed via the scientific method to understand and explain human decision-making. Incorporating the outcomes of his own published experiments and those of his esteemed peers, Dr. Hamilton presents information that allows you to better understand the choices you face every day, the tools you can use to make the best decisions for your personal goals, and how to most effectively influence the decisions of others.

Course Lectures

01: Thinking Scientifically about Decisions

Have you ever wondered why people make the decisions they do? Using the metaphor of manufacturing, learn what science has revealed about human decision-making: informational raw materials go in, the cognitive machinery processes, control mechanisms guide the machinery, and a decision is made.

Duration: 31 min

02: The Two-System Model of Decision Making

What’s going on in your cognitive machinery as you manufacture your decision? Delve into the two-system model of decision-making: System 1 is your automatic and intuitive processor, your earlier system from an evolutionary perspective; and System 2 is the flexible, powerful serial processor that you think of as you.

Duration: 30 min

03: The Role of Heuristics in Decisions

Heuristics are the decision shortcuts that people use every day. While too imprecise to lead to optimal decisions, they are powerful tools that allow you to make appropriate decisions fairly easily. However, if you don’t understand the limitations of heuristics, they can easily lead you astray from the truth into stereotyping and assumptions.

Duration: 30 min

04: How Habits Make Decisions Easier

Habits are our immediate automatic responses—good and bad—to situations when we don’t take the time to manufacture a purposeful decision. Decision science gives us the psychological framework within which to understand how habits form and are activated, and how best to change them when we want to.

Duration: 28 min

05: Self-Regulation and Choice

Have you ever felt that your mind was so overworked you just could not make one more decision? Learn about the “cognitive fuel” needed for System 2 to rein in the automatic responses of System 1, and figure out how to recognize when you really are too resource-depleted to make your best decisions.

Duration: 30 min

06: The Value Curve and Human Decisions

Prospect Theory reveals the ways in which our decision-making machinery values an item and why. Learn how to make better decisions by understanding appropriate reference points, sensitivity to changes in value, and the super-sensitivity we all experience when it comes to potential loss.

Duration: 29 min

07: Emotional Influences on Decision Making

Have you ever driven a bit recklessly when you felt angry or frustrated? If so, you know that emotions affect our decisions. Recently, scientists have discovered that our emotions play an even larger role than previously thought; in fact, they are an integral and necessary part of our cognitive machinery.

Duration: 30 min

08: How Goals Guide Our Decisions

Can you influence the cognitive machinery that manufactures your decisions? Absolutely. Learn why and how our goals motivate us, which goals inspire our greatest effort, and how best to motivate others to help them meet their own goals—whether it’s your sales team at work or your children at home.

Duration: 31 min

09: Reason-Based Choice

Even when manufacturing the seemingly simplest of decisions, our control panel can steer us in the wrong direction. Learn why our cognitive machinery often over-weights attributes, considers information that really has no bearing on the decision at hand, and sometimes makes short-term evaluations that won’t serve us well later.

Duration: 29 min

10: Mental Accounting as a Factor in Decisions

Mental accounting is a powerful decision-making tool we can employ to improve our lives. Learn how the process of partitioning objects and experiences in purposeful ways—everything from money and food to debt and social obligations—can increase happiness, decrease pain, and lead to better physical and emotional health.

Duration: 31 min

11: The Role of Mindsets in Decision Making

We don’t make decisions in a vacuum. Before we even have the opportunity to decide our next action, before a stimulus even comes our way, we are mentally prepared to receive it. Our mindset, that stage of mental preparation, significantly affects how we perceive and process information and the decisions that result.

Duration: 31 min

12: How Consistency Drives Decisions

Learn how the strong desire for consistency—between beliefs and actions, and between current and past actions—drives both our decision-making and our judgment of others’ actions. But what happens when our own actions are not consistent with our stated beliefs?

Duration: 29 min

13: Social Influences on Decision Making

Our relationships with others and broader societal pressures influence our decision-making, whether or not we’re aware of it. Learn how we look to others for guidance in the most subtle of ways, and consider the many decisions we make to try to mimic or please those whom we perceive to be powerful.

Duration: 29 min

14: Nonconscious Influences on Decision Making

Can subliminal messages cause us to make decisions almost against our will? Although a major hoax perpetrated on a panicked public caused us to believe just that for a while, science has demonstrated that we have more control than that—but there is still reason to be wary.

Duration: 31 min

15: An Evolutionary View of Decision Making

You might never have thought to blame a bad decision on your ancestors’ development millennia ago, but there just might be reason to. Learn about the often surprising and unexpected ways in which evolutionary drives—hidden beneath the surface of our control panel—guide our decision processes even today, for better or for worse.

Duration: 30 min

16: Regulatory Focus and Human Motivation

For centuries, decision-making motivation was seen in the context of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. But recent scientific research reveals a more complex framework. Regulatory Focus theory shows that we operate from four motivational states, not two, and it reveals a richer and more accurate framework for understanding our decisions.

Duration: 30 min

17: Decision Rules

How much information do you collect before making a decision? How much is optimal? Do you focus on the pertinent data or let extraneous information affect your choices? Discover the decision rules we use every day, and learn about the many fascinating real-world ways in which we evaluate and compare choices.

Duration: 29 min

18: How Context Influences Choice

Uncover the many unexpected ways in which information context affects our decisions. What happens when our mind acts like a big shovel, scooping up all the data in its path and processing that information together, whether relevant or not?

Duration: 28 min

19: How Framing Effects Guide Decisions

Even as children, we learned that the way in which we presented a choice to our parents was often as important as the specific question we asked. Decision science reveals just how that tool—decision framing—can be used to our benefit, and how it is used to manipulate our choices as consumers.

Duration: 28 min

20: The Role of Memory in Decisions

In addition to the new information your brain is constantly acquiring, you use memory in your decision-making process. In fact, the quality of any decision often depends on accessing the appropriate memories at the appropriate time.

Duration: 28 min

21: Assortments, Variety, and Choice

Although consumers almost always say they want more options, research shows that when faced with too many choices, consumers are sometimes unable to make any decision at all. Decision science reveals the best tools to use to narrow your choices when deciding on everything from a movie to a soul mate.

Duration: 30 min

22: How Evaluability Affects Decisions

Research shows that when evaluating options, we tend to place more importance on attributes we understand and less importance on those we don’t—without considering relevance to the decision at hand. Learn how to better evaluate the choices in front of you and to avoid as many poor-decision pitfalls as possible.

Duration: 28 min

23: Halo Effects and Choice

Can a marketing campaign affect how a food tastes? Even though you know the ad hasn’t changed the food itself, medical imaging reveals that your brain reacts as if it did! Learn about the fascinating ways in which this halo effect can hinder or help the accuracy of your decision-making.

Duration: 29 min

24: The Four Rs of Decision Making

Scientists don’t anticipate developing one unified theory to model decision-making; human beings are just too complex. But you can improve your own decision-making—as well as your ability to understand and influence the decisions of others—with these powerful empirical generalizations: reference points, reasons, resources, and replacement.

Duration: 34 min