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Mysteries in Decision Making that Interest Me

Mystery 1: How does a constantly changing landscape affect our everyday decisions? This involves constantly updating what we know about the world, trying to guess what the outcome of each decision would be, and determining what risks are worth absorbing. Decision theory discusses this exact mystery by determining probability of type I and type II errors and comparing that to acceptable level of risk. Since humans are not good at Bayesian thinking, we are not good at calculating type I and II errors in decision theory, so it might be interesting to determine to what extent we use decision theory in our decision making process. I would survey people about what their acceptable level of risk is for errors and then ask them a series of questions with various conditions to determine how good they are at determining risk of error in those situations.

Mystery 2: What is the interplay between logical thinking and emotions? We know that people are not purely rational thinkers because we do not play dominant strategies in game theory. Emotions should also be seen as information, and they can be measured by somatic markers and as-if body loops. It might be interesting to give people a game to play, and then add some emotional response to see how emotions would change it. For example, give the chicken game with and without a time pressure to increase anxiety to see how the results would change.

Mystery 3: How do political parties impact policy decisions? This mystery relates to personal morals that relate to our precious experience that shapes our political preference. Cognitive bias is the concept that would mediate how our previous experiences impact the party we identify with and in turn who we decide to vote for. One way to test this is by asking people who voted who they voted for, what policies were most important, and why each one is important/ not important. Then I would count all related to personal experience to determine how strong opinions are related to cognitive bias.