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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decision-making | 4/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decision-making | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T11:04:22.741043+00:00 | kb-cron |
Orientation. Members meet for the first time and start to get to know each other. Conflict. Once group members become familiar with each other, disputes, little fights and arguments occur. Group members eventually work it out. Emergence. The group begins to clear up vague opinions by talking about them. Reinforcement. Members finally make a decision and provide justification for it. It is said that establishing critical norms in a group improves the quality of decisions, while the majority of opinions (called consensus norms) do not. Conflicts in socialization are divided in to functional and dysfunctional types. Functional conflicts are mostly the questioning the managers assumptions in their decision making and dysfunctional conflicts are like personal attacks and every action which decrease team effectiveness. Functional conflicts are the better ones to gain higher quality decision-making caused by the increased team knowledge and shared understanding.
== Rational and irrational == In economics, it is thought that if humans are rational and free to make their own decisions, then they would behave according to rational choice theory. Rational choice theory says that a person consistently makes choices that lead to the best situation for themselves, taking into account all available considerations including costs and benefits; the rationality of these considerations is from the point of view of the person themselves, so a decision is not irrational just because someone else finds it questionable. In reality, however, there are some factors that affect decision-making abilities and cause people to make irrational decisions – for example, to make contradictory choices when faced with the same problem framed in two different ways (see also Allais paradox). Rational decision-making is a multi-step process for making choices between alternatives. The process of rational decision-making favors logic, objectivity, and analysis over subjectivity and insight. The irrational decision is more counter to logic. The decisions are made in haste and outcomes are not considered. One of the most prominent theories of decision-making is subjective expected utility (SEU) theory, which describes the rational behavior of the decision-maker. The decision maker assesses different alternatives by their utilities and the subjective probability of occurrence. Rational decision-making is often grounded on experience and theories that are able to put this approach on solid mathematical grounds so that subjectivity is reduced to a minimum, see e.g. scenario optimization. Rational decision is generally seen as the best or most likely decision to achieve the set goals or outcome.
== Children, adolescents, and adults ==
=== Children === It has been found that, unlike adults, children are less likely to have research strategy behaviors. One such behavior is adaptive decision-making, which is described as funneling and then analyzing the more promising information provided if the number of options to choose from increases. Adaptive decision-making behavior is somewhat present for children, ages 11–12 and older, but decreases in the presence the younger they are. The reason children are not as fluid in their decision making is that they lack the ability to weigh the cost and effort needed to gather information in the decision-making process. Some possibilities that explain this inability are knowledge deficits and lack of utilization skills. Children lack the metacognitive knowledge necessary to know when to use any strategies they do possess to change their approach to decision-making. When it comes to the idea of fairness in decision-making, children and adults differ much less. Children are able to understand the concept of fairness in decision-making from an early age. Toddlers and infants, ranging from 9–21 months, understand basic principles of equality. The main difference found is that more complex principles of fairness in decision making such as contextual and intentional information do not come until children get older.
=== Adolescents ===
During their adolescent years, teens are known for their high-risk behaviors and rash decisions. Research has shown that there are differences in cognitive processes between adolescents and adults during decision-making. Researchers have concluded that differences in decision-making are not due to a lack of logic or reasoning, but more due to the immaturity of psychosocial capacities that influence decision-making. Examples of their undeveloped capacities which influence decision-making would be impulse control, emotion regulation, delayed gratification and resistance to peer pressure. In the past, researchers have thought that adolescent behavior was simply due to incompetency regarding decision-making. Currently, researchers have concluded that adults and adolescents are both competent decision-makers, not just adults. However, adolescents' competent decision-making skills decrease when psychosocial capacities become present. Research has shown that risk-taking behaviors in adolescents may be the product of interactions between the socioemotional brain network and its cognitive-control network. The socioemotional part of the brain processes social and emotional stimuli and has been shown to be important in reward processing. The cognitive-control network assists in planning and self-regulation. Both of these sections of the brain change over the course of puberty. However, the socioemotional network changes quickly and abruptly, while the cognitive-control network changes more gradually. Because of this difference in change, the cognitive-control network, which usually regulates the socioemotional network, struggles to control the socioemotional network when psychosocial capacities are present. When adolescents are exposed to social and emotional stimuli, their socioemotional network is activated as well as areas of the brain involved in reward processing. Because teens often gain a sense of reward from risk-taking behaviors, their repetition becomes ever more probable due to the reward experienced. In this, the process mirrors addiction. Teens can become addicted to risky behavior because they are in a high state of arousal and are rewarded for it not only by their own internal functions but also by their peers around them. A recent study suggests that adolescents have difficulties adequately adjusting beliefs in response to bad news (such as reading that smoking poses a greater risk to health than they thought), but do not differ from adults in their ability to alter beliefs in response to good news. This creates biased beliefs, which may lead to greater risk-taking.