emotion Archives – Decision Fish: Decide For Yourself

The “Mystery” of Intuitive Decision Making

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 27 Jun 2017 18:09:03 +0000

A High Stakes Hunch I had just got the news: the bank I worked for was going to sell the business I was supporting. This was going to be the seventh transition of my 27-year banking career. Should I try to find a new job in the industry or start my own business? Somehow, I ... Read more

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Six Ways to Avoid Regret

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 12:50:42 +0000

I wish I had picked a different airline or maybe shelled out more money for a better seat. (I’m writing this squeezed into a coach seat near the lavatory on a six-hour flight to attend the Behavioral Finance Symposium in San Francisco.) I wish I had known six months ago that people were much more ... Read more

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Selling my Darlings

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 18:20:16 +0000

Let’s do something completely different this week. How about a photo-essay? When I began my study of decision-making, I assumed that the coldly rational, quantitatively financial-economic approach was the best. How else can you avoid making the systematic errors that our cognitive biases can cause? I’ve since learned that emotion, intuition, empathy and even unconscious ... Read more

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Interview With a Skeptic

Brett F. Whysel — Wed, 31 Aug 2016 19:09:49 +0000

Decision Fish Interviews Kim Stephenson, an occupational psychologist. Perhaps the greatest benefit of the World Wide Web, is contained in the first two words. Decision Fish’s blog has readership worldwide, self-selected to be some of the most thoughtful and smartest people anywhere. Kim Stephenson, an occupational psychologist from the UK is one of those people. Here’s a ... Read more

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Hide Your Clothes: How to Coerce Your Future Self

Brett F. Whysel — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 20:27:54 +0000

Yesterday, I was 15 minutes late for an appointment, notwithstanding my New Year’s vow (repeated—and failed—annually) to be more prompt. Last week, I published on my blog and social media my intention to create a web site that will apply best practices in decision science to help people make better financial decisions. Just the thought ... Read more

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We Use Feelings to Make Decisions, and that’s OK

Brett F. Whysel — Tue, 27 Oct 2015 15:58:33 +0000

One of the most important and surprising things I’ve learned about decision-making is that we rely on, even require gut feelings to make important decisions about the future. Naqiv, et. al. (2006) write about findings in neuroscience that support the somatic-marker hypothesis, which suggests that when we make decisions under uncertainty, we choose among different ... Read more

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Career Decisions & the U-Shaped Happiness Curve

Brett F. Whysel — Sun, 23 Aug 2015 12:41:36 +0000

The Atlantic recently ran this terrific article by Jonathan Rauch about the nearly universal u-shaped path of happiness that most humans and some primates follow: Happiness starts relatively high in early adulthood, declining steadily until late 40s or early 50s, when it picks up again until the final years. It appears to be much more ... Read more

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