Effective Decision Making

Recall from Section 7.1, that for each decision problem E, there is a perceived competence set HD*(E), a collection of ideas, knowledge and skills for its effective solution. When the decision maker believes that he/she has already acquired and mastered HD*(E), he/she would feel comfortable and confident about making a decision. Otherwise, he/she would hesitate to make a decision, especially when it involves high stakes. The perception, acquisition and mastering of HD*(E) thus play important roles in determining how fast and how effective a decision is made and executed. These topics and their applications will be the focus of study in this chapter. In particular, we shall discuss decision cycles in Section 8.1; core of habitual domains in Section 8.2; learning processes in Section 8.3; classes of decision problems in Section 8.4; decision quality, confidence, risk taking and ignorance in Section 8.5; effective decision making in Section 8.6; and decision assistance in Section 8.7. In the appendix (Section 8.8), decision situations and competence sets are further explored.