The diversity of form among these models indicates that they agree on the futility of trying to understand and improve real-world decisions in terms of a single pliable concept such as maximizing (or seeking to maximize) expected utility.
– Decision Making in Action: Methods and Models
Previous studies have shown that learning by analogy instructions is more robust than learning by explicit instructions in cognitively demanding situations, such as stress…
– The effect of explicit, implicit and analogy instruction on decision making skill for novices, under stress
All tests are at their heart a test of decision-making ability. In an English Paper 2 exam for instance, students have to make such decisions as: what an answer is, what technique(s) to apply, plausible working definitions of novel vocabulary, how long to dwell on a particularly elusive answer and on the best way to phrase answers.
Decision making is a life skill which utility extends far beyond exams. Students are, in the course of lessons in non-academic subjects engaged on the right thing to do. Just like how sometimes we may look at the worked example in a textbook and lament at its lack of applicability given insufficient complexity in the illustrated question, one could argue the same of scenarios discussed in such lessons. Also, in our proudly Asian tradition, such discourse leans towards prescriptivism – this is the right thing to do.
Prescriptivism is rigid and discourages independent exercise of rational and other faculties. It does not recognise that priorities or the weight assigned to various competing or complimentary factors which determine a decision could differ among individuals. Also, the only outcome it focuses on is a clear conscience. To this extent, prescriptivism is not sufficiently fine-grained. Understandably so, since it is not feasible to consider prescribing the right course of action for an entire universe of possible fact matrices.
Two analogies may be illustrative. In Never Split the Difference – Negotiating as if your life depended on it, Chris Voss exhorts the reader to never consider a 50-50 apportionment as a default. He says people might think themselves big hearted by not pressing too hard for advantage. In Asian cultures, being calculative about every fine point is not encouraged. Chris says a 50-50 split might look like the right thing to do because of some innate sense of fairness but in actual fact leaves much on the table and pertinently both parties not quite satisfied. This is one example where prescriptivism on the right thing to do might result in forfeiting what one could have had, legitimately and more importantly, having left someone else better for it. This analogy illustrates how the unique nature of possible situations calls for a less coarse-grained approach.
To use an analogy which could appeal to technophiles, adopting prescriptivism is like buying a mass-produced personal computer which is not optimised for one’s unique needs. What students could have instead is a custom-made PC. It looks better and feels better. A custom-made PC’s system is built to handle the peculiar requirements of the user through the assemblage of stand-alone components with sufficient capability and capacity. This analogy illustrates how a fine-tuned and individualised decision-making system could bring about more efficient outcomes.
The right thing to do may differ substantially because of subtle differences in what ex facie appears to fit a known category of situations. Besides many things in life are neither black nor white but really in varying fuzzy shades of grey. There are times when students would really need to exercise independent judgement because a cookie-cutter solution would not work. Everyone knows the right thing to do in a broad way. A general moral compass will not be of much assistance because there are times when equally compelling factors collide.
The foregoing suggests a case for equipping students with models of decision making. The traditional paradigm has been to ask a trusted adult when in doubt. There could be situations which the student faces which the trusted adult has not. Even if this were not the case, as game theory would advise, the dominant strategy would be to have, in addition to a moral compass which can be taught easily through explicit instruction and transmitted through proverbs as early as in lower primary, ways to make decisions when no one has the answer.
The first point in this regard is that the best decisions are not those necessarily derived through some elaborate and systematic process. Some people would throw around the word ‘rational’ as a rhetorical device. In other words, to persuade someone undecided, one could say, ‘Be rational’ and then proceed to cloud the target’s vision with a wall of arguments and pseudo arguments as to why the target should subscribe or comply with the seller’s wishes. The seller (this term is used in a very loose sense) would position himself as some kind of authority on rationality whatever that means, and imply point blank that doing anything other than exactly what it is he is suggesting is not rational.
It is difficult to make a wise decision when one is up or has one’s back, against the wall. Decisions made in such situations are essentially made on survival instincts and are by nature blunt. The persuader’s tactics here can be characterised as argumentum ad verecundiam – I have A-Z and therefore I am A-Z and therefore, of course you would be silly to do anything other than exactly what I am hoping you would do.
Raanan Lipshitz is an Israeli professor of psychology. He reviewed a number of decision-making models. These include, Situation Assessment, Recognition-Primed Decision making, Explanation-based decisions, Search for Dominance Structure, Image Theory, Skill based, rule based and knowledge-based behaviour, decisions based on where a situation falls on cognitive and task continua, decision cycles and argument driven action.
It should be noted that different situations call for different types of decision making. There is no one best way applicable across situations. While each of the aforementioned models are useful in their own right, we will discuss applicable principles rather than describe each model comprehensively. This is to adopt an eclectic approach rather than a disciplined (in the sense of being strict and purist about what belongs within a model) one.
A decision by definition comprises selection. This necessarily implies more than one possibility. While a decision can be as stark as to be or not to be, decision making models are usually premised on the availability of alternatives. In essence, the models offer a way to rank and choose between alternatives. For example, in English cloze passages or compositions, synonyms are alternatives. There is no such thing as a perfect synonym. Every word has slightly differing connotations and may be more appropriate for particular contexts. This is the premise of the vocabulary cloze component. It is also questionable if in certain domains, there are in fact alternatives.
When there is a need to piece together piecemeal evidence into a coherent narrative say for example in an open-ended comprehension passage, students can rely on what Lipshitz terms ‘episodic schema’. Here students attempt to attribute goals and mental states to characters in stories. They would have to conceive of initiating events which caused the characters to do what they did. After they have constructed a possible narrative, they would have to check if there is any evidence that contradicts this narrative. If there is such evidence, they would have to construct an alternative episodic schema which is a better fit.
Sometimes a decision has to be made in an analytical way, that is to proceed in a step-wise manner. Sometimes it has to be made in an intuitive manner. An intuitive decision is when the student has “high confidence in an answer and low confidence in the manner which produced it” (Lipshitz, 1993). It is usually light on the working memory.
Kenneth R Hammond who studies judgement explained that “tasks that require processing large amounts of information in short time periods induce intuition and tasks that present quantitative information in sequential fashion induce analysis”. While almost every question of English Language Paper 2 lends itself to an analytical approach even if such approach is conducted in an automatic and subconscious way, there are instances where intuition would be useful.
The Paper 2 exam as a whole is demanding cognitively and there is time pressure. A student would be better off making decisions based on what looks and feels right. In the continuous writing task of Paper 1, while there is an analytical component, students have to rely on an intuitive process as they develop their story. This is what writers mean when they say the story wrote itself.
One way to make decisions in non-exam related domains, is to use compatibility, and profitability matching. Compatibility matching is done the following way. The decision maker has an image of her values or what in a given point in time she values, her goals and her plans to achieve such goals. If an alternative matches with her values, goals and plans, she adopts it. If “more than one candidate survives this test, the decision maker selects the best of them by using a test of profitability, a collective label for various methods of choosing among alternatives”.
Progress decisions is an interesting tool. Here, the decision maker has to envision the future should she adopt a certain course of action. If she finds that her choice is likely to lead to problems or would lead to a less than satisfactory future, she could change her choice.
There are times when people feel compelled to make good of a decision which has produced less than satisfactory outcomes. This is when they throw good money after bad. When confronted with a more attractive alternative, people practice two strategies to assure themselves of their choice. These are deemphasising and bolstering (Lipshitz, 1993). The former is to play down the positive qualities of an alternative one does not possess and the latter is to enhance one’s own perception of what one does have, for instance by promoting it in public hoping to find agreement which reinforces the merits of a decision.
Decision making is cognitively demanding and requires gatekeeping at a threshold between alternatives. Sometimes though, the path ahead may seem narrow with no alternatives. This however, should not become a stumbling block.
It is only when one moves forward that there is a possibility of stumbling into good.
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