Reading Response #4: Opinion- Why We Make Bad Decisions

      Since I am waiting for the third and final book of the Divergent series to be released, I googled interesting articles to find anything that sparked my interest. I found an article published by Noreena Hertz in New York Times. Hertz is a professor of economics at University College London and the author of “Eyes Wide Open: How to Make Smart Decisions in a Confusing World.” She wrote about the reasons human beings make poor decisions based on her own opinion, personal experience,  and research in hopes that her readers may learn and hopefully make smarter decisions in their future.       
      The short article explains how she came across the topic of personal bias and common mistakes. Hertz became very ill and searched for an answer for her unexplained sickness. Seeing many professionals across the world, she got a lot of diagnoses and conflicting opinions from medical experts. She was not sure which was the right decision to choose and so she decided to research decision making in fields like neuroscience, psychology, sociology, information science, political science and history. To her surprise, Hertz found that physicians tend to get things wrong, yet most people never question experts. In her article she stated, "In a 2009 experiment carried out at Emory University, a group of adults were asked to make a decision while contemplating an expert’s claims, in this case, a financial expert. A functional M.R.I. scanner gauged their brain activity as they did so. The results were extraordinary: when confronted with the expert, it was as if the independent decision-making parts of many subjects’ brains pretty much switched off. They simply ceded their power to decide to the expert." Hertz then concluded that if we want to make the best possible decision in our favor we must turn our brains back on and come to medical consultations with plenty of background research done. We cannot let our personal biases get in the way of making an important decision either. Anxiety, stress, and fear are all emotions that can distort our choices. We must try to eliminate as much of our own flaws as others in the hope of coming to the right conclusion.       
      I really liked this article because it made me realize how nobody knows all of the answers. Even doctors make mistakes and it is up to us to decide who to trust, and ultimately, to make the final decision for ourselves. It reminds me a lot of a government website that advises you on making decisions and giving you helpful tips. The site is http://www.sba.gov/content/making-decisions. I'd advise you to check it out if you're having trouble with making the right choice. The article by Noreena Hertz is below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/20/opinion/sunday/why-we-make-bad-decisions.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&src=me