Post Category → Psychology

Decision Engineering

Tim Van Gelder, arguably the worlds greatest authority on critical thinking, asks “What is Decision Engineering?”:

 My favorite definition of the engineer is somebody who can’t help but think that there must be a better way to do this. A more comprehensive and workmanlike definition is given by Wikipedia:
“Engineering is the application of scientific, economic, social, and practical knowledge in order to invent, design, build, maintain, research, and improve structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes.”
The activities mentioned above seem to fit this very broad concept: we were engaged to help improve or develop systems – in our case, systems for making decisions. It is therefore tempting to describe some of what we do as decision engineering.”…Decision engineering is applying relevant knowledge to design, build, maintain, and improve systems for making decisions.”
“Relevant knowledge can include knowledge of at least three kinds:
  • Theoretical knowledge from any relevant field of inquiry;
  • Practical knowledge (know-how, or tacit knowledge) of the decision engineer;
  • “Local” knowledge of the particular context and challenges of decision making, contributed by people already in or familiar with the context, such as the decision makers themselves.”
…in order to improve a particular decision system, a decision engineer might use approaches such as:
  • Bringing standard engineering principles and techniques to bear on making decisions
  • Using more structured decision methods, including the application of decision analysis techniques
  • Basing decisions on “big data” and “data science,” such as predictive analytics
…In short, I like this more general definition of decision engineering (in four words or less, building better decision systems) because it seems to get at the essence of what decision engineers do, allowing but not requiring that highly technical, quantitative approaches might be used.”

Source: What is Decision Engineering? | Tim van Gelder

Construal Level Theory

There was a lot of soul searching and anger around the time of the Paris massacre in November 2015 because the Paris massacre got so much attention whereas the Beirut bombing the previous day did not. Maybe Construal Level Theory explains it:

Construal level theory (CLT) is a theory in social psychology that describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people’s thinking (e.g., about objects and events) is abstract or concrete. The general idea is that the more distant an object is from the individual, the more abstract it will be thought of, while the closer the object is, the more concretely it will be thought of. In CLT, psychological distance is defined on several dimensions — temporal, spatial, social and hypothetical distance being considered most important,[3] though there is some debate among social psychologists about further dimensions like informational, experiential or affective distance.

An example of construal level effects would be that although planning one’s next summer vacation one year in advance (in the distant future) will cause one to focus on broad, decontextualized features of the situation (e.g., anticipating fun and relaxation), while the very same vacation planned to occur very soon will cause one to focus on specific features of the present situation (e.g. what restaurants to make reservations for, going for a trip in an off-road vehicle).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construal_level_theory