Decision-Making Is a Science

So it's the day after Earth Day and I think the environmental focus is still with me. Perusing through my usual suspects for blog post fodder, I came across a New York Times Magazine article titled "Why Isn't the Brain Green?" and I immediately clicked on it. I wasn't sure what I was expecting to get from it, but what I got wasn't something I would expect: insight into decision-making.

The brunt of the article focused on people's decision-making when it came to environmental topics --not the particular decisions being made but how people came to them. Taking away the environmental overtones, the article's author presents some ideas that could most definitely apply to consumer decision-making in the retail environment.

Here are some tidbits I found particularly interesting:

• People can behave unexpectedly when faced with seemingly simple choices.
• We all possess "automatic biases" such as being "more adverse to losses than we are interested in gains."
• We are "extremely susceptible" to how questions are posed.
• We have different processes for assessing risk (analytical and emotional) and both present their own unique problems.
• We enjoy knowing we're part of a group, and if reminded of that membership, the group becomes "sort of the decision-making unit."

My take-away: It's hard to anticipate the decisions people are going to make, but tinkering with how the decision to be made is framed could help shape the outcome.