Decision Making and Emotions

Question 1

What is decision-making?

Answer 1

-The process of developing a commitment to some course of action/choice
1. Choice
2. Process
3. Commitment

The process of problem-solving
4. Problem + gap between a current state and desired state

Question 2

Rational Decision-Making

Answer 2

• How decisions ‘should ‘be made.
• Process of choosing a course of action from a # of different alternatives
• Makes consistent, value-maximizing choices within specified constraints.
• Assumption of classical/ neoclassical economics

Question 3

Rational Decision-Making is most effective when there is:

Answer 3

• Problem clarity
  The problem is clear and unambiguous.
• Known options.
  The decision maker can identify all relevant criteria and viable alternatives.
• Clear preferences
  The criteria and alternatives can be ranked and weighted.
• Constant preferences
  Specific decision criteria are constant and the weights assigned to them are stable over time
• No time or constraints
  Full information is available because there are no time or cost constraints.
• Maximum payoff
  The choice alternative will yield the highest perceived value.

Question 4

Actual Decision- Making

Answer 4

• Bounded rationality
• Satisfaction
• Intuition
• Judgement shortcuts

Question 5

Bounded Rationality

Answer 5

-Limitations on a person’s ability to interpret, process and act on information
-Limitations may include:
* Political constraints
* Resource constraints (information, time, money)
* Satisficing
* Intuitions
* Cognitive biases
* Emotions

Question 6

Satisficing

Answer 6

• Identifying a solution that is “good enough”.
• The first acceptable option rather than the optimal one.

Question 7

Intuition

Answer 7

A non-conscious process created from distilled experience results in quick decisions.
Relies on holistic associations.
Not rational but often not wrong.

Question 8

Dunning-Kruger Effect

Answer 8

• Low ability individuals think they are better than they are
• You need a certain level of skill/ knowledge in an activity to realize how truly bad you are.

Question 9

Sunk Costs

Answer 9

Sunk costs (escalation of commitment): a behavioural pattern where an individual or group continues to rationalize there decisions despite increasingly negative outcomes and evidence that it would be better to alter their course in action.

Question 10

Prospect Theory

Answer 10

A theory that describes the ways in which people make decisions based on the potential value of losses and gains rather than the final outcome

Explains how framing affects our decision-making, specifically whether our options are framed as losses (Negative framing) or gains (positive framing).

Question 11

Prospect theory
Cont’d

Answer 11

With positive outcomes, we prefer a sure thing over a risk
Why commission-based pay tends to be higher.
People prefer to take a chance when preventing a negative outcome.
Risk aversion is also a personality trait.

Question 12

Ethics

Answer 12

• Broadly applied social standards for what is right or wrong in a particular situations, or process for setting those standards
• Ethics are socially constructed
• Many situations are ethically grey

Question 13

Moral Disengagement

Answer 13

Explains how we can behave unethically without experiencing cognitive distress.
* Cognitively reconstruct unethical conduct to appear more ethical.
* Redirect blame for unethical behaviour or diminish the harmful consequences.
* Reduce identification with targets of unethical actions.

Question 14

Moral justification-

Answer 14

cognitively reframe unethical acts as being in the service of a greater good

Question 15

Euphemistic labeling

Answer 15

the use of sanitized language to rename harmful actions to make them appear more benign

Question 16

Advantageous comparison

Answer 16

exploits the contrast between a behaviour under consideration and an even more reprehensible behaviour to make the former seem innocuous

Question 17

Displacement of responsibility

Answer 17

refers to the attribution responsibility for one’s actions to authority figures who may have tacitly condoned or explicitly directed behaviour.

Question 18

Diffusion of responsibility

Answer 18

refers to dispersing responsibility for one’s action across members of a group.

Question 19

Distortion of consequences

Answer 19

the minimization of the seriousness of the effect of one’s actions, thus providing “little reason for the self-censure to be activated”

Question 20

Dehumanization

Answer 20

framing the victims of one’s actions as undeserving of basic human consideration

Question 21

Attribution of blame

Answer 21

– responsibility is assigned to the victims themselves, who are described as deserving whatever befalls them

Question 22

Affect

Answer 22

Emotion: Short term, rapidly changing, intense, discrete
Mood: Medium term, Lasting, Less extreme, Not tied to specific incident
Trait Affect: Long term, stable, general lens, personality trait

Question 23

Positive affectivity

Answer 23

• Experience positive emotions and moods; view the world in a positive light
• Tend to be cheerful, enthusiastic, lively, sociable, and energetic

Question 24

Negative affectivity

Answer 24

• Experience negative emotions and moods; view the world in a negative light
• Tend to be distressed, depressed, and unhappy

Question 25

Positive affectivity implications in the workplace

Answer 25

• High job satisfaction
• High job performance
• Experience more creativity
• Engage in more Organizational citizenship behaviours

Question 26

Negative affectivity job implications

Answer 26

• Low job satisfaction
• Poor job performance
• Experience more stress
• Engage in more Counter productive work Behaviours

Question 27

• Recognition:

Answer 27

Ability to identify the emotions that others feel, to detect authenticity of others emotional expressions, appraising one’s own emotions, and expressing emotions clearly.

Question 28

• Understanding

Answer 28

Ability to comprehend emotion language, to analyze cause and effect relations between events and emotions and to understand how basic emotions combine to form complex emotions.

Question 29

• Regulation

Answer 29

Ability to set emotional regulation goals, create emotion regulation strategies, and to implement emotion regulation strategies.

Question 30

Cognitive intelligence (IQ)

Answer 30

• Best predictor of task performance
• But not a good predictor of org. commitment, OBCs or CWBs

Question 31

Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Answer 31

• Predicts better interpersonal relationships, better job performance in jobs requiring emotional labour, better leadership and performance on teams.
• Above and beyond cognitive ability.

Question 32

Issues with EQ

Answer 32

• EI is too vague conceptually.
• EI is difficult to measure.
• Research has overstated findings.
• Popular literature (like a book written by Goleman) made it seem like EI was amazing and helped with everything.
• EI is important for organizational outcomes, but not more so than IQ

Question 33

Emotional labor

Answer 33

-The effort in planning and control needed to express organizationally desired emotions during interpersonal transactions that abide by the display rules of the organization

Question 34

Deep acting

Answer 34

involves changing true emotions to match the required emotion. (Helps overcome emotional dissonance)

Question 35

Surface acting:

Answer 35

Involves pretending to show the required emotion.