Thinking and Decision-Making by Eniola Oyekanmi

Thinking is a cognitive process involved with creating, examining and evaluating

information. Decision making involves the selection of one option out of many possible
alternatives. Thinking and decision-making models are relatively simplified paradigms of
the process of making decisions, either on a macro level, which is observing behaviors
on a large scale, or micro level, which dives deeper into the human mind and the reason
for making such decisions, with the aim of understanding a complex phenomenon that
cannot be easily quantified. 

The model to be considered is the adaptive decision maker framework. This was
developed by Payne, Bettman and Johnson in 1993 and explains decision making on a
micro level. Payne, Bettman and Johnson suggests that decisions are made using a
toolbox of strategies, that people possess, in order to make decisions and the strategy
they use depends on the type of decision they are making. These strategies are divided
into 2 categories: alternative based strategies and attribute-based strategies.
Alternative-Based Strategies involve picking an alternative and comparing attributes it
has. Reverse is the case for Attribute-Based strategies. This is when the decision maker
chooses an attribute and compares the alternatives that possess that attribute.
Alternatives are the options the decision maker must choose from, for example,
domino’s pizza, Pizza Hut or Debonair pizza, and attributes are behaviors,
characteristics or features displayed by the alternatives such as fast delivery, taste of
food and good customer service. 

Under Alternative-Based strategies, we have the Weighted Additive strategy (WADD)

and the Satisficing strategy (SAT). The weighted additive strategy involves calculating
the weighted sum of attributes for each alternative and then choosing the alternative
with the highest value. Weighted sum refers to how important the attribute is. Each
attribute is giving a value with the most important having the highest. Each alternative is
then judged on how much of each attribute they possess. They all the attributes are
then added together per alternative. The one with the highest value, as previously
mentioned would be the chosen one. This provides the most accurate results, but it
requires lots of effort. The Satisficing strategy (SAT) involves deciding a cut off point for
very attribute and then choosing the only that surpasses all the cutoff values and
eliminating the rest. If none can pass the cut off value, the value would be relaxed. This
is done for each attribute and each alternative, so it requires lots of energy.

Attribute-Based Strategies include the Lexicographic strategy (LEX) and the Elimination
by aspects strategy (EBA). The Lexicographic strategy (LEX) is terribly like WADD
especially in rate of accuracy, but it differs because it requires less effort. The most
important attribute is identified and then the alternative with the best value of that
attribute is chosen. Meaning, if all the attributes are rated between 1-5, one of those
attributes are identified at most important and then the alternative with a 5 (or the
highest value) is chosen. The Elimination by aspects strategy (EBA) is a combination of
the SAT and the LEX. A cut of point is chosen for the most important aspect and those
that do not reach the cut off point for this attribute are eliminated. If there are still many
alternatives, the second most important attribute is chosen, and a cutoff point is made
for that. This continues till there is only one alternative left.

The methodology of choosing which strategy to use to make these decisions is by

identifying which meta goal is the decision meant to achieve. There are 4 meta goals,
maximizing decision accuracy, maximizing the ease of justification, minimizing cognitive
efforts and Minimizing the experience of negative emotions. No decision purely focuses
on one meta goals and thus usually a decision is not a result of purely on strategy. If the
aim of the decision is to maximize accuracy, the best strategy to use is said to be the
weighted additive strategy. As by choosing the alternative with the highest amount of
important attribute you are most likely to receive the most accurate outcome. If the aim
is to maximize ease of justification, the strategy used varies but it is usually the
satisficing strategy. To minimize the experience of negative emotion such as guilt or
regret, attribute-based strategies are best used as it focused more on the attributes and
whom/which is more deserving rather than the alternatives individually. Lastly, to
minimize cognitive effort to reduce the amount of energy of effort used to make the
decision the lexicographic strategy would be the strategy chosen because it requires
less deliberating. 

One problem with the adaptive decision maker is that is highly reductionist. Decision
making is a complex cognitive process, and the adaptive decision maker oversimplifies
it by dividing it to only being composed of strategies and meta goals. The adaptive
decision maker also did not account other factors like experience, and bias into how we
make decisions but only talks about emotion even though evidence shows that other
factors like those previously mentioned affect decision making (AJZEN 1985).
Thankfully on the other hand, it was able to clearly highlight possible, plausible
strategies for making decisions which is backed up by research. One of this research is
the Luce, Bettman and Payne in 1997.

The aim of the research was to determine is decisions are really based on emotion and
if strategies are truly used to make these decisions. The method used was experiment
and it was an independent measure design. 27 undergraduate students were asked to
pretend to be members of a charity and they had to decide which of 5 children are to
receive financial aid. They were split into 2 groups, one of high emotional manipulation
and one of low emotional manipulation. The group with high emotional manipulation
was told that the remaining four children that they did not select would have no other
means of getting financial aid and the other group was told that the remaining will get
financial aid from somewhere else. The children (the alternatives) were listed in a
tabular form and other columns were made listing various attributes such as family size
and living conditions. This was done on “Mouselab”, a software in which the cells are
hidden, and the participants had to click a specific cell to see the information in that cell.
The researchers propose that those that used the alternative based strategies would
consecutively pick different alternatives for the same alternatives while those using
attribute-based strategies would successively pick various alternatives under one
attribute.
The result was that those in the group with higher emotional manipulation spent more
time and opened more cells as well as engaged in attribute-based strategies which
shows they were avoiding experiencing negative emotion as they were making
decisions. If they chose alternative based strategies, they would have felt more negative
emotions because they would know the children personally affecting their sympathy.
The researchers concluded that the adaptive decision maker framework is reliable, and
that emotion plays a good role in decision making.

This study was able to successfully prove the adaptive decision maker framework with a
replicable experiment. They tried to eliminate ecological invalidity by using a scenario
remarkably like those faced by some individuals in society, but this is not a scenario
faced by many and decisions are usually less intense than this. In addition, their
samples are too few as well as composing of only students making it hard to generalize.
Ethically this research faces some scrutiny as well. The group with high emotional
manipulation might have felt unfavorable feelings such as stress, regret and guilt which
counts as emotional harm towards the participants.

In conclusion, the adaptive decision maker framework is a detailed model that

represents how decisions are made. Although it does not account for factors other than
emotion in how people make decisions, it is still a justifiable model of decision making.