Wiser Decision Making

Environmental managers and researchers place a high value and trust in scientific and economic evidence as being crucial to wise decision-making. But investment in gathering evidence for use in decision-making is not matched by investment in the decision-making process itself. 

Many people think good decisions results from this: gather the best available data and evidence, rationally analyse it, and the decisions become clear (rational choice theory). With this view, if you want better decisions, it’s logical to:

• Invest in more environmental data and information
• Gather stakeholder views (as another form of data)
• Ensure that science-trained experts, who know how to rationally analyse, make the decisions

But what if this is all based on incorrect assumptions about how decisions are made and what determines the outcome?

Getting it wrong would be like investing millions in gathering data and then using a ten quid calculator to process it. We need to understand and invest in what processes the evidence, decides what matters, and plans what to do, and in the end it is human brains and human decision processes.

And it turns out that none of us are rational optimisers. In fact, we have all sorts of mental glitches that can make fools of us! So if humans are not rational optimisers what does influence our decisions? We have summarised 5 key factors below:   Click here to read more