I was staring at a shelf full of sparkling water for five minutes when the Walmart employee came to ask if there was something wrong. There wasn’t. I was simply visualizing myself drinking each of them to decide which flavour to buy. As a psychology student, I frequently heard the saying that humans are at the “higher-level” of animals as we proudly distinguish ourselves with the gift of logical reasoning. Firmly believing so, I always hope I can make the most logical answer every time I am given a choice, until I soon realize it’s impossible. People might have less time to decide if another gets to live or die than what I have for sparkling water. For example, a police officer may have to decide whether to pull a trigger within seconds.

So, what determines the choice of decision-making strategy people rely on? It perplexes me how people can make crucial decisions so easily. Or, to be more accurate, so automatically. Are we really the “wise human beings” that adopts rational thinking all the time, or are we just impulsive and making errors from time to time? According to the literature, even experienced agents don’t seem to make the most logical and accurate decision (Reyna, Chick, Corbin, & Hsia, 2013) - no matter it’s due to a lack of information, limited time, or distant memories that require much effort to retrieve, and research shows people do take more information into account without these limitations (Bröder & Schiffer, 2003; Platzer & Bröder, 2012).

But, is that all? Especially when a police officer pulls the trigger with an instinct to shoot a criminal?

I am not a student that blindly agrees with the so-called consensus. In my Cognitive Science course, we were free to choose a topic for our research presentation and I did mine on an unusual topic - the movie Interstellar. My professor, Dr. Hatala was not a fan of the movie and didn’t agree to the proposal until I promised to convince him. The Science of Interstellar (2014), the book by the Nobel-winning theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, one of the great minds whose ideas gave birth to the film was tremendously helpful to me. I examined in detail his discussion about the universe and the possibility of time-travel and made sure I could explain in simple terms for things like the worm-hole and black-hole. I also referred to the research methods from academic journals and searched for interviews and comments from science websites. Having carefully considered the audience and purpose of my presentation, I successfully offered a brand-new perspective to understand science behind its scenes. From then, I am convinced that we should always find new perspectives to understand or even challenge what we have learned about anything.

As I have tried to approach adaptive decision making by applying my knowledge of memory and the signal detection theory, as well as our tendency to evaluate cues differently according to the elaboration-likelihood model, I look forward to investigating the computational process at work when people resort to different decision-making strategies given various constraints. When are we more prone to bias and when do we thinking more holistically in such flexible mechanisms? Is there a universal core mechanism among them that causes one decision to be made more efficiently than another?

This is why the MSc Cognitive and Decision Science programme attracts me. The module I look forward to the most is Judgment and Decision-Making as it fits with my key motivation for the next stage of academic exploration. While my previous study has laid a solid foundation of psychological knowledge and understanding of cognitive theories, as my study progresses, I hope to further explore the key mechanisms at work that directly leads to the final choice output, so I can help people better understand the choices of others and themselves. By linking theories of decision making and cognition in terms of how people perceive and process information, I will be more prepared to answer my questions.

Besides, I am also very glad and looking forward to taking the Computer Programming module as I believe it offers a powerful tool to understand and solve existing problems. In my Psychological Research capstone project, Using multiple regression in SPSS to investigate people’s personality factors in relation to dreams and stress, I have already witnessed the usefulness of data analysis tools. I believe that the programming skills will be handy when I develop computer-based experiments to model the participants’ choice of different decision-making strategies when controlling the resources available to them, such as time. Also, I believe the mastery of programming concepts will be vital to understand the human decision-making models due to their resemblance, as well as compare and contrast the different processes between the two that leads to the different outcomes, as we are much more flexible than computers being a mechanism powered by neurons. Having gone through each of the core modules and a few great elective options, I appreciate how the course structure is well-balanced for providing a comprehensive coverage from interdisciplinary perspectives.

After my master’s study, I plan to stay in the UK and seek a consulting position, preferably in technology companies, that deals with user experience and behaviours, so I could utilise my practical research skills and knowledge gained in this course. After accumulating an abundance of work experience and field knowledge, I will return to school and pursue a doctorate to conduct research on the question that I asked above. Ultimately, my ideal career is to become a psychologist to help us understand mankind better.

Reference

Bröder, A., & Schiffer, S. (2003). “Take The Best” versus simultaneous feature matching: Probabilistic inferences from memory and effects of representation format. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 132(2), 277-293.

Platzer, C., & Bröder, A. (2012). Most people do not ignore salient invalid cues in memory-based decisions. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(4), 654-661.

Reyna, V., Chick, C., Corbin, J., & Hsia, A. (2014). Developmental Reversals in Risky Decision Making: Intelligence Agents Show Larger Decision Biases Than College Students. Psychological Science, 25(1), 76-84.

Thorne, K. S. (2014). The science of interstellar. New [University Name]: W.W. Norton & Company.