Essay On Social Cognitive Aspects Of Decision Making

In this section, we attempt to address some of the social cognitive aspects of decision-making. There are several factors that influence our decisions, such as past experiences (Juliusson, Karlsson, & Gӓrling, 2005), cognitive biases (Stanovich & West, 2008), age and individual differences (Bruin, Parker, & Fischoff, 2007), belief in personal relevance (Acevedo, & Krueger, 2004), information overload, illusion of knowledge, heuristics and an escalation of commitment etc. It is important to know the factors that influence our decisions, because it helps to understand what may impact the outcomes and why a particular decision is made. Social cognition involves the perception, interpretation and processing of social information that underlies social interactions and includes emotion, social perception, social knowledge and attribution bias (Penn et al, 2005a). As we know that heuristic is one such phenomena that serves as a framework in which satisfactory decisions are made quickly and with ease (Shah & Oppenheimer, 2008). Thus, researchers of social cognition are concerned with that social realm which involves its many hidden and subjective features.

Further, past experiences can also impact future decision making. Juliusson, Karlsson, and Garling (2005) claimed that on the basis of past experiences people infer in future. If there was a positive result in past, then people are more likely to decide in a similar way, if are given a similar situation. Again, in real life when one encountered a sudden event like an accident for the first time, people accumulate these informations as knowledge or believe in their memory. These accumulated knowledge and believes are known as cognitive structure. Our mind is consists of vast amount of su...

... middle of paper ...

...n-making has been widely shared in various disciplines because it is a fundamental objective of social life. It is an important area of research in the field of social cognition. Understanding the process by which individuals make decisions is important to know the way decisions are made, which further helps to know the different factors that influenced the outcomes. Some of those factors are past experiences, cognitive biases, age and individual differences, belief in personal relevance, and an escalation of commitment. As we know that the essence of decision making seems to integrate both in the related social situation and subjective reactions to those situations, it can be concluded that many important aspects of social cognition not only helps us to know what are involved in making decisions, but also helps us to interpret the world around us more effectively.