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BEST OF HBR 1998 In making decisions, you may be at the mercy of your mind’s strange workings. Here’s how to catch thinking traps before they become judgment disasters.

The Hidden Traps in Decision Making by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa
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Reprint R0601K

In making decisions, you may be at the mercy of your mind’s strange workings. Here’s how to catch thinking traps before they become judgment disasters.

BEST OF HBR 1998

The Hidden Traps in Decision Making by John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa

COPYRIGHT © 2005 HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PUBLISHING CORPORATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Before deciding on a course of action, prudent managers evaluate the situation confronting them. Unfortunately, some managers are cautious to a fault—taking costly steps to defend against unlikely outcomes. Others are overconfident—underestimating the range of potential outcomes. And still others are highly impressionable—allowing memorable events in the past to dictate their view of what might be possible now. These are just three of the well-documented psychological traps that afflict most managers at some point, assert authors John S. Hammond, Ralph L. Keeney, and Howard Raiffa in their 1998 article. Still more pitfalls distort reasoning ability or cater to our own biases. Examples of the latter include the tendencies to stick with the status quo, to look for evidence confirming one’s preferences, and to throw good money after bad because it’s hard to admit making a mistake. Techniques exist to overcome each one of these problems. For instance, since the way a problem is posed can influence how you think about it, try to reframe the question in various ways and ask yourself how your thinking might

change for each version. Even if we can’t eradicate the distortions ingrained in the way our minds work, we can build