Rational decision-making

Rational decision-making is the process of making choices based on rationalism, which is the philosophy of using reason as the basis of one's thoughts and actions. The primary purpose of rational decision-making is to produce the most favorable outcome for oneself by logically considering all the possible solutions to a problem and choosing the one that best suits one's needs.

Making decisions according to rationalism is an ordered process. Its steps are outlined in a traditional rational decision-making model. The model assumes that three conditions are present in every ideal situation requiring an actor (a person or organization) to make a decision. These conditions are that the actor fully knows the problem and all its possible solutions, that individual actors in organizations make decisions consistent with their organizations' preferences, and that the problem is clearly defined and can be neatly solved by making the most rational decision.

In reality, actors may not always have all the information necessary to make the most rational decisions, but the decision-making model remains valid as long as the three conditions are present on even a basic level.

Background

Rational decision-making applies the philosophy of rationalism to making choices. People often struggle to make decisions based entirely on reason and logic. This is frequently due to emotions, which are natural in humans.

The twentieth-century American political scientist Herbert Simon claimed that one could not ignore the influence of emotion when charting human rationality. Sociological and business-administration research in the twenty-first century generally agrees with the assessment that emotions frequently interfere with otherwise rational human judgment. They can sometimes directly sabotage a person's plans and cause him or her to divert from an originally stated life goal. For instance, anger might embitter someone to the thoughts and opinions of others and therefore that person may not trust advice that actually makes sense.

People can eliminate some of the poor decision-making that results from the presence of emotions by acknowledging the ways in which their emotions are affecting them. People should put off making significant life decisions until they are calm. In the United States, some states require that couples wait for a period of six days after obtaining their marriage license to get married. This allows those who may have applied for the license in an emotional state to think about their decision rationally. Recognizing that one is currently experiencing strong emotions is often enough to convince people not to make major decisions at the moment. People who cannot perceive that their emotions are affecting their judgment should rely on trusted family members and friends to tell them.

All this effort to banish emotions from decision-making is intended to incorporate rationalism into the process. Rationalism uses reason and logic alone to discover truths. From a rational perspective, only those hypotheses that can be tested using human experience should be considered. Rationalism relies on the scientific method for determining the viability of a claim. The rationalist view rejects claims that cannot be scientifically proven. For this reason, for example, rationalism typically dismisses arguments for the existence of God or other supreme beings. Rationalists also do not take human emotions into account when making decisions, for they serve only to impair judgment.

Overview

The rationalist approach to decision-making is grounded in reason and logic. Rational decision- making has one object: to produce as advantageous an outcome as possible for the decision maker. Rationalism employs a kind of scientific method to arrive at this outcome. A rational decision-making model provides users with ordered steps that will theoretically help them make the best decisions for themselves. The model assumes that three main conditions are present in the situation requiring a decision. These conditions are ideal and may exist only in degrees in real-life circumstances.

The rational decision-making model assumes first that an actor is fully informed about the problem, the various possible solutions, and all the outcomes of each solution option. Rarely is this the case in life, since people are frequently forced to make decisions based on incomplete information. However, people could be said to have made rational decisions if they based their choices on the best information available to them at the time.

The model assumes next that organizations or other decision-making groups are unitary actors that make decisions based on their officially stated policies. This assumption, as with the first one, is based on ideal conditions. In reality, groups that must make decisions are rarely internally harmonious, for they are composed of many individual actors who likely have conflicting views of the best decision to make in a given situation. In these cases, the actors usually must form coalitions (as in governments) and then use their collective power to make rational decisions and solve problems. However, these coalitions themselves can interfere with the true rationality of a decision, for the bodies often make decisions based solely on what will appease the most members of the coalition. This makes some decisions inherently irrational.

The rational decision-making model's third and final assumption is that the problem requiring a decision is explicitly defined and unconnected to any other current problem. Once again, this assumption applies only to ideal conditions. In reality, problems can be complex and certainly related to other existing issues. Businesses and other large organizations might cope with complex problems simply by responding to them using methods that have been determined in advance. Individuals can respond to intricate problems using their intuition or past experience in solving similar problems. Experience may be a person's only source of wisdom when making a decision to solve a complicated problem. The exact context of this problem might be new to the decision maker, but the experience of having managed this type of problem once before can serve as the rationalism one needs to make an informed decision.

People make rational decisions in many areas of life. Buying a car, for instance, could be an opportunity to apply the ordered steps of rational decision-making. The first step involves one acknowledging that one wants to buy a car. The second step involves identifying which factors of the car are most important, such as price, size, and fuel economy. A rational decision maker will weigh all the car options that fit these criteria and then make the decision that delivers the best outcome.

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