Ten Steps to making Better Decisions (New Scientist)

In May 2007, New Scientist magazine had an article entitled 'How to make decisions', The article outlined and discussed ten steps to help us. The article was a collection of scientific reports and study which supported each step.

Ethically it would be wrong of me to publish the entire 10 steps as it is a subscription magazine and the entire article is not available on the net.

Some of the ten steps are fairly predictable indeed if you wrote down ten things that your parents told you which turned out to be true you would probably get quite close to the New Scientist list.

6. "Don't cry over spilt milk"

This is where we have invested something in a project and are therefore more inclined to stick with it rather than just walk away. Even governments suffer from this, examples include the channel tunnel and Concorde.

If something is no longer a good idea then it is time to walk away. Careers can be like this, you spend ten years working your way up only for the industry to go through a massive restructure. You don't have to go back into the same industry, but we think with ten years experience you would be a fool to walk away now.

7. "Look at it another way"

The Science they bring into this is that the way we frame a problem impacts on our decision.

Consider the following two hypothetical situations taken from the article:

Scenario 1

"Your home town faces an outbreak of a disease that will kill 600 people if nothing is done. To combat it you can chose either programme A, which will save 200 people or programme B, which has a one in three chance of saving 600 people but also a two in three chance of saving nobody. Which do you choose?"

Scenario 2

"You are faced with the same disease and the same number of fatalities, but this time programme A will result in the certain death of 400 people whereas programme B has a one in three chance of zero deaths and a two in three chance of 600 deaths."

Of course most people would choose A in Scenario 1 and B in Scenario 2. The certain saving of 200 people while condemning 400 to death. The media would crucify you either way but that is the curse of disaster management, you make the best decisions you can to save as may lives as possible.

Both scenarios are the same and both result in the same probabilities but because the way the scenario's are framed we are left predisposed to a specific answer. The more positive a statement the more we are likely to agree with it.

"It also explains why healthy snacks tend to be marketed as "90% fat free" rather than "10% fat".

-Ten Steps to making Better Decisions (New Scientist)