Individual Learning 1: Decision Traps
We'll explore 12 cognitive traps that often affect management decision-making.
What are Decision Traps?
They are the flip side of powerful and efficient brain processes that humans have developed as we evolved in order to survive.
Most of the time they help us cope with the complexity of our environment and do many things very well. Sometimes however, they distort the way we collect and process information and predispose us to errors in judgment; hence the name traps.
These cognitive traps are so hard-wired into our thinking process that we fail to recognize them even when we are falling right into them. We cannot eliminate them, but through understanding them we can learn to anticipate and compensate for them.
This week we'll explore three types of decision traps that frequently impact our decision-making: Uncertainty traps, Pattern traps and Simplification traps.