As Marcus Aurelius states: “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.” In order to understand everyone is different from the other, first, we need to know how humans perceive and react in different situations in regard to decision-making. I was impressed after having an exercise of interpretation with three pictures.

Following each instruction by Dr Secil BAYRAKTAR, it was amazing to see how people change their ideas and feelings when we devote more time examining a situation. It is true that when we perceive a situation, most times, our reactions are partly negative or neutral at best. The reason that I want to emphasize this finding is that I realized when we make assumptions, it is always based on our experience, stereotype, cultural background, and expectation. Thus, people might have a misunderstanding of each other and communicate. However, in some particular cases, perception creates many illusions and psychologically brain takes a shortcut to conclude an initial judgment.

To date, several studies have investigated that the brain uses the experience to jump to the “most likely” conclusion. Yet, these same assumptions can lead people grossly astray (Cole, 1995). More perception errors people make are examples of selective perception, halo effect and projection. As people are more and more sociable nowadays, I think we all should have more awareness of our perception and think twice before we speak out.

When people start to perceive a situation, problems in our life are identified. Solving a problem can be difficult when making a proper decision. There are two types of decision-making process: programmed and non-programmed. Depending on the time and money we spend on the result, decision-making can be rational sometimes; for example, people looking for a flat or a wedding ring might devote plenty of time and money to make the right decision. But, while going to grocery shops, people would possibly buy food based on their experience and emotion. However, I recognized myself as an irrational decision maker that do not regret every decision made. Because I know myself and I have to try everything whatever outcome I receive. This is what people say, “you will never learn if you do not make mistakes”.

However, people cannot always follow their heart in the workplace. For example, there would be certain constraints, such as time, lack of information and cost, leading to make an undesirable decision. Due to decision biases happening, six hidden traps of decision-making are identified as anchoring, status-quo, sunk-cost, confirming-evidence, framing and estimation and forecasting traps. When a company traps into hidden decision-making, a good leader should be capable of identifying the type of hidden trap and put a stop to it , for example, Sony, Kodak and Coca-Cola. As we are learning perception and decision-making today, to conclude, I am expecting to be true to myself and aware of things happening around me in order to avoid being trapped into unfavourable situations.

Ying-Hsi CHEN, MSc. Tourism and Hospitality Management, Class of 2020