Human Decision Making

This topic submitted by Adam Cook, Emily Garritson, Matt Huelsenbeck ( Cookaj, Garritem, Huelsemw, @muohio ) on 2/2/06. [ Human Nature Team: Adam Cook, Emily Garritson, Matt Huelsenbeck-Section: Cummins/Wolfe]

Our project addresses human nature through analyzing the abilities of humans to make decisions. Decision making is a fundamental aspect of human survival and plays a key role in everyday human experiences. Therefore, our project will address three human nature questions pertaining to the area of decision making. First and foremost we want to discover if humans are rational in the decisions they make. Another objective of this project is to investigate whether humans make better decisions in group situations or individually. Furthermore, does our research make implications towards humans preferring social situations? Our project will integrate principles from the fields of sociology, psychology, statistics and the life sciences. We will be gathering scientific data that will require participants to perform simple estimation tasks. After collecting the empirical data, we will further questions participants with a survey about their confidence levels while estimating in a group or otherwise. After testing, we will statistically analyzing the data for significant differences or trends which will guide our conclusions about human decision making. We will also be supporting our project through interpretation of our qualitative data and additional sources that may give us better insight into our research questions.

Sources include:

Steven's Handbook of Exp. Psychology, Memory and Cognitive Processes, Arthur B. Markman and Douglas L. Meclin

Mathematical Thinking and Learning 5 (4) 259-280 Quantitative Education: One, Two, or Three abilities. Lawrence Erlbaum

Social Proble-Solving Strategy Quiestionnaire, Keltikangas-Jarvinen and Pakaslahti

Are 6 Heads Better than 12. American Psychological Association February 1, 2006

Cultural and Psychology, David Matsumoto, Linda Juang

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