{"id":4927,"date":"2020-04-09T10:26:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T17:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=4927"},"modified":"2020-04-09T10:26:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T17:26:24","slug":"the-economics-of-decision-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2020\/04\/09\/the-economics-of-decision-making\/","title":{"rendered":"The Economics of Decision Making"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Decisions, decisions, decisions, we all have to make them. Some of us struggle with making a decision while others are good at it. Some of us would rather have others make those decisions for us while others simply just flip a coin as a compass for directions. In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.researchgate.net\/profile\/Icek_Ajzen\/publication\/264001106_The_Social_Psychology_of_Decision_Making\/links\/0f31753c7e05d198aa000000.pdf\">psychology<\/a> decision making is categorize as the cognitive process that encompasses our ability to select a course of action among several alternative possibilities. It is the process of identifying and picking alternatives based on value preferences.\u00a0 Every decision-making may produce a final choice that may or may not need prompt action. A major part of decision making is the total priority for each alternative base, upon our own valued system. Meaning, that we can rank our chooses based on a ranking system. Overall, decision-making is something we do every day.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: 300;\">In addition to the psychological definition of decision making, <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: 300;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.businessdictionary.com\/definition\/economic-decision-making.html\">economics<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: 300;\"> define decision making as the process of identifying alternatives courses and choosing an appropriate alternative when faced with decisions. Likewise, the goal of every decision is to obtain a form of reward. Every reward requires some sort of a\u00a0 trade-off or sacrifice. For instance, when an individual made the decision to attend college or university, they certainly desired a reward. But what was the sacrifice of that? some sacrifices cannot be measured in dollars, such as loss of sleep, close friends, and those home-cooked meals. Some, however, can be measured such as the cost of tuition, room and board, and books. These are all the examples that can be termed as an <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: 300;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.investopedia.com\/terms\/o\/opportunitycost.asp\">opportunity cost<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: 300;\">. Opportunity cost is the reward. It is the basic relationship between scarcity and choice. Additionally, it is the cost of one item that could result in one losing the opportunity to do or consume something else. Moreover,\u00a0 as decision-makers, we all want the reward or benefit from a decision to be greater than the sacrifice or cost required to attain it. That relationship between the sacrifice and reward is known as <\/span><a style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: 300;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.investopedia.com\/terms\/c\/cost-benefitanalysis.asp\">cost-benefit analysis<\/a><span style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: 300;\">. Cost-benefits analysis has to do with the trade-off between the rewards of choosing a given alternative and what had to be given up in order to obtain those rewards. Therefore, whenever we are faced with making a decision, there is a lot that goes into play whether we are aware of it or not. Each decision has an opportunity cost, trade-offs. and cost-benefits analysis. So the next time you are faced with a decision, think about what are the rewards, sacrifices and the economics behind that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Decisions, decisions, decisions, we all have to make them. Some of us struggle with making a decision while others are good at it. Some of us would rather have others make those decisions for us while others simply just flip a coin as a compass for directions. In psychology decision making is categorize as the cognitive process that encompasses our ability to select a course of action among several alternative possibilities. It is the process of identifying and picking alternatives based on value preferences.\u00a0 Every decision-making may produce a final choice that may or may not need prompt action. A <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2020\/04\/09\/the-economics-of-decision-making\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  The Economics of Decision Making<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":609,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/609"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4927"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4930,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4927\/revisions\/4930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}