Hi, I'm Julie Tietz. And welcome to Conflict Resolution-- putting the pieces together. Today, our topic for discussion is nonrational factors in decision making. So let's get started by breaking down our key terms.
Emotional bias-- a tendency to believe that something which generates a pleasant feeling is good and that something which evokes an unpleasant feeling is bad. Status symbol-- an item which suggests that its owner has a high social status. Rule of thumb-- an expression meaning a general estimate knowing it will not be entirely accurate in all situations.
Nonrational-- in decision making, the influence of emotional factors rather than tangible gains or losses associated with a choice. Salience-- a factor of an object, idea, choice, et cetera, which draws additional attention to that item.
When we have a decision to make, whether it's small or something that has greater importance to us, a rational way that we may attempt to make this decision. Could be through a cost-benefit analysis where we weigh out the pluses and minuses. And this may be a logical step that we take. And we think we are making the best decision when we are doing this.
Well, we're not actually making our decisions based upon these cost-benefit rational ways of decision making. But rather, we're guided by the nonrational factors, such as emotional, relational, and biological.
And so you would think that one would want to make their decisions based upon the logical pros and cons list. But actually, we're more guided through our emotions, our relationships, and how our brain is wired and operates. So we're going to talk more about these nonrational factors throughout this tutorial today.
When we're talking about our emotional factors in decision makings, we are talking about our feelings and what our gut says about a particular decision or situation. And this goes along with our emotional bias, which gives us our good versus bad feelings, so pleasant versus unpleasant feeling. And so we make our decisions based upon how we feel about it, if it's good or if it's bad.
I know that we all have these feelings and emotional bias within ourselves. So an example could be I'm going to go out and do my shopping for the day. And the forecast is predicting a storm. And I'm not feeling too good about leaving my house in the storm because it's unsafe to be in the storm driving in my car. And so I'm basing my decision to stay home on this unpleasant or bad feeling that I'm having.
We also base our decisions on relational factors, so through our relationships, through our peer groups, through our co-workers even. And this includes our status symbol, so wanting to base our decisions on high social status and through peer pressure as well. And so we are trying to acquire a status symbol when we are making our decisions through our relationships and relational factors.
And a good example of this could be peer pressure for a teen or a young adult in having to experiment with drugs and alcohol from their peer group. They may not necessarily want to do it. But in order to obtain or maintain the status symbol within the group, they are peer pressured into experimenting with drugs and alcohol.
And the third way in which we make nonrational factors include biological factors. And so this includes our neurological or our brains and how that affects our decision making. And so we base our decisions on salience, so how things stand out. And our brain is attracted to the things or objects or choices or ideas that are outlandish and more out there. And so we base our decisions on these factors.
And we also may base our decisions on a rule of thumb. So we may not exactly have the exact precise measurements, but we're estimating. And so we're going along with the general sense of the idea and the rule of thumb. And so that's how we're making our decisions.
So an example of a salient or salience decision could be man, I really like this practical sedan for a new car. But wow, jeez. That convertible is really fun and really flashy. And so I'm going to go along with the more flashier, out there car versus the more practical vehicle because I'm basing my decisions on the biological factors here.
So let's go over our key points for nonrational factors in decision making. When we are making decisions, we are guided by the nonrational factors more than we are the rational factors. So the rational factors, again, would be a cost-benefit or pros and cons list on how we're going to make a decision.
We're more guided by emotional factors or our feelings, and relational, our relationships and our peer groups, and also biological, so how our brain guides us in decision making. I hope you learned something today from this tutorial. And I can't wait to catch you again next time.