An overview of the different types of decision making

Types Of Decision Making

Main types

There are many types of decision making and these can be easily categorised into the following 4 groups:

Rational
Intuitive
Recognition primed decision making
The ultimate decision making model

Let's consider these in more detail.

Rational

Rational decision making is the commonest of the types of decision making that is taught and learned when people consider that they want to improve their decision making. These are logical, sequential models where the emphasis is on listing many potential options and then working out which is the best. Often the pros and cons of each option are also listed and scored in order of importance.

The rational aspect indicates that there is considerable reasoning and thinking done in order to select the optimum choice. Because we put such a heavy emphasis on thinking and getting it right in our society, there are many of these models and they are very popular. People like to know what the steps are and many of these models have steps that are done in order.

People would love to know what the future holds, which makes these models popular. Because the reasoning and rationale behind the various steps here, is that if you do x, then y should happen. However, most people have personal experience that the world usually doesn't operate that way!

Intuitive

The second of the types of decision making are the intuitive models. The idea here is that there may be absolutely no reason or logic to the decision making process. Instead, there is an inner knowing, or intuition, or some kind of sense of what the right thing to do is.

And there are probably as many intuitive types of decision making as there are people. People can feel it in their heart, or in their bones, or in their gut and so on. There are also a variety of ways for people to receive information, either in pictures or words or voices.

People talk about extra sensory perception as well. However, they are still actually picking up the information through their five senses. Clairsentience is where people feel things, clairaudience is hearing things and clairvoyance is seeing things.

And of course we have phrases such as 'I smell a rat', ' it smells fishy' and 'I can taste success ahead'.

Other types of decision making in the intuitive category might include tossing a coin, throwing dice, tarot cards, astrology, and so on.

Decision wheels are usually more humorous than intuitive but they do have a serious application.

Recognition primed...

Gary Klein has spent considerable time studying human decision making and his results are very interesting. He believes that we make 90 to 95% of our decisions in a pattern recognition way. He suggests that what we actually do is gather information from our environment in relation to the decision we want to make. We then pick an option that we think will work. We rehearse it mentally and if we still think it will work, we go ahead.

If it does not work mentally, we choose another option and run that through in our head instead. If that seems to work, we go with that one. We pick scenarios one by one, mentally check them out, and as soon as we find one that works, we choose it.

He also points out that as we get more experience, we can recognise more patterns, and we make better choices more quickly.

Of interest here is that the military in many countries have adapted his methods because they are considerably more effective than either of the types of decision making we've discussed already. In fact, you could say that his model is a combination of the above two types of decision making.

The ultimate...

In terms of making decisions for your own life, this last of the types of decision making is my favored model. It includes the ideas of the recognition primed decision making model and much more.

Firstly, before you even make a decision, you establish how and who you want to be. You obviously want to be in a good state so that you can make good decisions. But you also want to be true to yourself, and that means knowing who 'yourself' is.

Once you learn how to be solid and centred, then and only then, do you make decisions. And the decisions are always organised around staying true to yourself and doing things that are good for and aligned who you are. Doing things that are on your own path, and that allow you to become even more solid and centred...

The whole model is organised around having the kinds of experiences that you want to be having, and even when the world upsets your plans with its own, you learn how to use this and manipulate it so that you still get what you want anyway...

Now it's obviously a little bit more tricky to learn! Because you're learning about a human being and not just writing out lists on a sheet of paper. But the time and effort invested means that you develop a wealth in your life that you may have only previously dreamed of...