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Independent decisions are fictional from a psychological perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2014

Hans-Rüdiger Pfister
Affiliation:
Institute of Experimental Industrial Psychology, Leuphana University Lüneburg, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany. pfister@uni-lueneburg.dewww.leuphana.de/en/hans-ruediger-pfister.html
Gisela Böhm
Affiliation:
Faculty of Psychology, University of Bergen, 5015 Bergen, Norway. gisela.boehm@psysp.uib.nohttp://www.uib.no/personer/Gisela.Boehm#profil

Abstract

Contrasting independent with socially influenced decision making does not capture crucial differences in decision making. Independence is fictional, and social influences substantially permeate preference construction. A distinction between deliberate and intuitive decision making would be more useful, and the problem in the big-data era is deciding when it is better to rely on deliberation and when to trust one's intuitions.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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