anchoring bias The tendency to make judgments based on initial information without utilizing

new information to revise the original assessment.

attribution theory A theory about how people establish explanations for their own and others'
actions and the outcomes that arise from them.

availability bias The tendency to assess the frequency or probability of an event based on
the most readily remembered information.

bounded rationality The notion that humans' limited mental abilities combined with external
factors over which they have little or no control prevent them from making perfectly rational
decisions.

broaden-and-build model of positive emotions The notion that positive emotions broaden
our thought-action repertoires and help build mental, physical, social, and psychological
resources.

common-good approach The notion that ethics should consider the welfare of everyone.

confirmation bias The tendency to look for information that confirms or supports what we
believe to be true and to discount information that disproves or does not support it.

consensus The extent to which behavior is common across individuals.

consistency The extent to which a behavior is repeated over time.

contrast effect The tendency to evaluate two things that occur close together in time against one
another rather than against a fixed standard.

creativity The generation of ideas that are both original and adaptive.

debiasing judgment A process of becoming aware of cognitive biases in order to eliminate

them from the decision-making process.

distinctiveness The extent to which a behavior is unique to a particular situation.

escalation of commitment bias The notion that when people make a decision they tend to
stick with it, and the more invested they become in their choice the less likely they are to
abandon it, even when the costs of the decision outweigh the benefits.

ethics Standards of behavior that provide guidelines for how human beings ought to act in
various situations.

fundamental attribution error The tendency to overattribute others' behavior to dispositional

factors such as abilities, traits, and motives and to underattribute their behavior to situational
factors outside their control.
heuristics General rules of thumb that help reduce the complexities of information
processing involved in making decisions.

hindsight bias The tendency for people to believe that they could have predicted the correct
outcome after they know the actual outcome.

justice approach The notion that in order to be ethical, decisions must treat people equally,
or at least equitably, and be based on a defensible standard.

perception The process by which people bring meaning to their world by organizing and
interpreting the stimuli around them.

primacy effect The tendency to rely on information gathered from earliest experiences with a
target or series of targets.

rational decision-making model The process of identifying and selecting the outcome of
maximum value to the organization through six steps: defining the problem, identifying the
criteria for the solution, weighing the criteria, generating alternatives, rating alternatives
according to the criteria, and computing the optimal decision.

recency effect The tendency to rely on information gathered from a person's most recent
experiences with a target or series of targets.

rights approach The notion that an ethical decision is one that best protects and respects
people's moral rights.

satisficing The notion that the decision maker establishes an adequate level of acceptability
for the outcome to a problem and then screens alternative solutions until one is deemed
satisfactory or sufficient.

selective perception The tendency to pay attention to people, objects, or events that stand out.

self-serving bias The tendency for people to attribute their own successful behaviors and
outcomes to dispositional characteristics and to blame external factors for poor behaviors and
failures.

stereotyping The tendency to assume that objects, people, or experiences that fall into the same
group share more characteristics than they actually do.

sunk costs Permanent losses of resources incurred as the result of a decision.

three-component model of creativity A model that proposes that creativity is the result of a
person's expertise, creative-thinking skills, and motivation.
utilitarian approach The notion that an ethical decision is one that provides the most amount of
good while doing the least amount of harm.

virtue approach The notion that people's actions ought to be consistent with certain ideal
virtues that provide for the full development of humanity.