SB 5715 - Risk and Crisis Management

Do you think that you have and use rational decision making strategies?

Numerous social psychological research shows the opposite; people make lots of cognitive biases and errors in their judgment and decision making processes. Most of the time - if not always - we use some short - cut strategies so called heuristics instead of rational, step by step decision making procedures. Emotions, environmental constraints, our past experiences and future expectations mediate daily and expert judgments and decision making. Even experts do fail to make rational decisions.

Rationality is an important concept that will be discussed in the course. There is no single definition of rationality. Economists, engineers, medical doctors, military personnel, and social psychologist defined it differently. The purpose of SB 5715 Risk and Crisis Management course is to inform students about the mechanisms underlying judgment and decision making. Students are going to be asked to perform short projects about this topic and show their reasoning abilities. Although this course is not based on mathematical theories, simple and intermediate level of statistical knowledge is necessary (especially theories of probability, correlation and regression). Furthermore, decision making under special uncertainties, such as risky situations and so called crises, is the major topic that we are going to discuss in class sessions.

Students:

 want to make both correct and fast decisions (because rational decision making strategies are very slow to compete with other individuals)
 want to make better decisions because they are graduating from the university (better DM strategies are needed for the “real life”
 do not want to feel regret after their decisions
 want to reach decisions that they wish the most (without considering the consequences)
 do not want be indifferent when confronting by the alternatives (Is reaching a decision better than no decision?)
 prefer to make decisions in groups rather than as themselves
 prefer to make decisions for others to themselves (because the former is much easy).