October 6th, 2006 in Lifehack, Management

10 reasons people make stupid decisions

The blog Bad Analysis shares their count down on why would people insist to make bad decision even they are clearly wrong. It is good read to understand them and avoid them (the reasons and people) at all cost:

We’ve come this far… (sunk cost bias)
Me me me! (egocentric bias)
That just proves my point. (confirmation bias)
That’s easy. (overconfidence)
I’m #1! I’m #1! (dysfunctional competition)
Mine mine mine! (endowment effect)
Watch out for sharks. (availability bias)
If everybody else think so… (conformity)
Lets go hard 8! (illusion of control)
He’s just a moron. (attribution error)

10 reasons people make stupid decisions – [Bad Analysis]

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Leon Ho

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Marco says on October 6th, 2006 at 10:27 am

I really like your website, but I think that this is just wrong.
First of all, all these reasons are heuristics that are used by ALL people to help them make decisions without expending a lot of effort. This means that these strategies work on average or else they would be extinct already.
Second, the descriptions are incomplete. Take the attribution error. This probably refers to the fundamental attribution error: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....tion_error
This term is used for the fact that people tend to assume that the actions of other people are mostly influenced by their personality and that their own actions are dominated by external influences.
So if you were losing the big basketball game, you would probably blame the lousy lighting instead of your own skills.
Sam says on January 21st, 2008 at 4:26 pm

I think that your comment was a bad decision.