Decision Making

INTRODUCTION
Decision making can be regarded as the mental processes (cognitive process) resulting in the selection of a course of action among several alternatives. Every decision making process produces a final choice. The output can be an action or an opinion of choice. In other words it is simply the method of choosing among available options i.e., purposeful selection from among a set of alternatives in light of a given objective.
Decision making precedes many of life’s most important events: choosing whom to marry, which house to buy, which stock to invest in, whether to have just one more drink before hitting the road, whether to have surgery, and whether to quit smoking, to name a few examples. Properly executed decision making gives rise to some of the most elevated human abilities, Such as ethics, politics, and financial reasoning. Derangements of decision making underlie some of the more tragic consequences of Psychiatric illnesses such as drug addiction, eating disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, mania, and personality disorders.
From a psychological perspective, it is necessary to examine individual decisions in the context of a set of needs, preferences an individual has and values they seek. From a cognitive perspective, the decision making process must be regarded as a continuous process integrated in the interaction with the environment. From a normative perspective, the analysis of individual decisions is concerned with the logic of decision making and rationality and the invariant choice it leads to. Yet, at another level, it might be regarded as a problem solving activity which is terminated when a satisfactory solution is found. Therefore, decision making is a reasoning or emotional process which can be rational or irrational, can be based on explicit assumptions or tacit assumptions.
Decision making can be hard. Almost any decision involves some conflicts or dissatisfaction. The difficult part is to pick one solution...