Topic
Decision making research, explained
21 open-access decision making studies, each with a flashcard deck and a quiz.
- How We Learn Value While Making Quick Decisions
Decisions between high-value options are faster because people lower their threshold for making a choice, not because they process information faster.
- Eye-Tracking the Split-Second Dynamics of Risky Choices
When choosing between risky financial options, people rapidly integrate both odds and payouts using automatic cognitive processes rather than slow, deliberate calculations or oversimplified shortcut rules.
- Is our ability to judge our own minds general or task-specific?
An individual's ability to accurately evaluate their own performance is largely shared across different mental tasks, supporting a domain-general metacognitive ability.
- How difficulty processing emotions affects moral choices
People with trait alexithymia are more willing to support harmful actions for the greater good because they feel less empathic concern for the victim.
- Does stress make us grab smaller rewards now instead of later?
Being put under acute stress did not change how impatient people were on average, but it pushed low-stress-prone people towards smaller immediate rewards and high-stress-prone people towards waiting.
- How do emotions and bodily awareness affect impulsive choices?
While long-term personality traits predict distinct types of impulsive and risky choices, a person's current emotional state and awareness of their bodily signals do not.
- Does the Cognitive Reflection Test measure math or intuition?
The Cognitive Reflection Test predicts better decisions because it measures math skills, not because it measures the ability to override intuitive errors.
- Separating Habit from Value in the Iowa Gambling Task
A new math model shows that separating our habit of repeating past choices from our calculations of future rewards better explains human decision-making.
- Can algorithms replace human discussion in group decisions?
Simple decision-making algorithms cannot replace actual human interaction when group members have different levels of skill.
- How do learning speed and reward sensitivity affect gambling tasks?
People who perform poorly on gambling tests often simply learn at a slower rate or struggle to notice differences in reward sizes rather than having a fundamental decision-making impairment.
- How Do We Change Our Mind-Style to Make Faster Decisions?
People lower their decision standards as time passes within a choice, especially when they know some decisions might be impossibly difficult.
- Do patients want AI doctors?
In 1,183 vignette ratings, people trusted and preferred human doctors most, human+AI next, chatbot last—especially sensitive in psychiatry.
- Do older adults decide worse, or just expect a different world?
Older adults scored lower than younger adults on an explore-or-exploit game only when outcomes were purely random; when change really did become more likely over time, they did just as well.
- Can a clinicopathologic model predict cSCC metastasis risk?
A Dutch-developed, England-validated model (C-index ~0.80–0.84) gives personalised absolute metastatic risk for cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma better than current staging for key decisions.
- Can a phone app help people with schizophrenia join treatment decisions?
In 194 Danish outpatients, 6 months of a shared-decision-making app plus usual care improved patient activation (d = 0.33), communication confidence, and feeling prepared to decide, but not symptoms, hope, or admissions.
- Who waits for bigger rewards, and do discounting scores agree?
Four different ways of scoring impatience for money all agreed closely, and people who chose to wait tended to have higher intelligence, better executive function and a stronger focus on the future.
- What makes some people better at thinking up options for decisions?
People who were good at brainstorming unusual uses for everyday objects also generated more options for real-world problems, and this held even after accounting for their memory, executive control and intelligence.
- Does guided reflection help medical students make better diagnoses?
Slowing down to reflect and list alternative possibilities does not help medical students arrive at a more accurate final diagnosis.
- Do priors reshape motor preparation before you act?
In 62 adults, probabilistic cues biased decisions and inhibited prior-incongruent motor cortex excitability; MEP modulators vs non-modulators tracked believer vs empiricist styles.
- Does feeling close to your future self make you more patient?
People who felt more connected to their future selves chose larger delayed rewards more often, but only if they also had a clear sense of who they are.
- Do people judge risk by long-run payoff or by how often they lose?
Scoring the same Iowa Gambling Task choices by long-term payoff versus by how often decks punish gave different pictures of risk-taking, and the gap between them depended on how long people waited before retesting and, after a short wait, on sleep loss.