Why We Make Bad Decisions
The simplest answer to the question may be "to err is human." We are not referring to honest mistakes that we may commit occasionally - after all, no one is infallible. What we are examining is our propensity to make decisions even when the evidence stares us in the face that the consequences could be disastrous. Malcolm Gladwell provides an interesting phenomenon in his best-selling book Blink , where he introduces the concept of autonomous decision making - a process of thinking without thinking. Such a process has its origins in intuition, cognition, and gut feeling. Before getting to some patently bad decisions, let us understand the mechanism of an exceptionally good decision made without going through analysis or synthesis. On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 took off from New York's LaGuardia airport headed towards Charlotte Douglas airport. Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger was in command. As the aircraft was climbing to its designated alt