What Is It Like to Be a Citizen?

Author(s):  
Eric Beerbohm

This chapter defends a theory of citizenship that recognizes our need to make online decisions under electoral pressures, given our foibles as decision makers. Drawing upon the extensive literature on decision and judgment, it examines how fragile citizens are when it comes to decision making. The usual heuristics offered by political scientists suggest that citizens rely on informational shortcuts that are morally irresponsible. If we reconceive the role of the voter in explicitly moral terms, this approach is unsatisfactory in addressing the cognitive biases and defects of citizens. The chapter also considers the notion of cognitive partisanship and argues that it is unavoidable for decision makers to rely on heuristics when they reason about complex decisions. It concludes by emphasizing the task for a democratic ethics of belief: to provide citizens with heuristics that reduce the cognitive burden while respecting the moral obligations to attach to coercive, term-shaping decision making.

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-535 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Mullaly

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of decision rules and agency in supporting project initiation decisions, and the influences of agency on decision-making effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – The study this paper is based upon used grounded theory methodology, and sought to understand the influences of individual decision makers on project initiation decisions within organizations. Data collection involved 28 participants who were involved in project initiation decisions within their organizations, who discussed the process of project initiation in their organization and their role within that process. Findings – The study demonstrates that the overall effectiveness of project initiation decisions is a product of agency, process effectiveness or rule effectiveness. The employment of agency can have a direct influence on decision-making effectiveness, it can compensate for organizational inadequacies of a process or political nature, and it can be constrained in the evidence of formal and effective organizational practices. Research limitations/implications – While agency was recognized by all participants, there are clearly circumstances where actors perceive the ability to exercise agency to be externally constrained. The study is exploratory, contributing to the development of substantive theory. Theory testing as well as a more in-depth investigation of the underlying drivers of agency would be valuable. Practical implications – The study provides executives and individuals supporting the initiation of projects with insights on how to effectively influence the effectiveness of project initiation decisions, and the degree to which personal characteristics influence organizational dynamics. Originality/value – Most discussions of agency has been framed the subject as an executive- or board-level phenomenon. The current study demonstrates that agency is in fact being perceived and operationalized at all levels. Those demonstrating agency in the majority of instances in this study do so in exercising stewardship behaviours. This has important implications for how agency is perceived by executives, and by how agency is exercised by actors at all levels of the organization.


Symmetry ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiaru Li ◽  
Fangwei Zhang ◽  
Qiang Li ◽  
Jing Sun ◽  
Janney Yee ◽  
...  

The subject of this study is to explore the role of cardinality of hesitant fuzzy element (HFE) in distance measures on hesitant fuzzy sets (HFSs). Firstly, three parameters, i.e., credibility factor, conservative factor, and a risk factor are introduced, thereafter, a series of novel distance measures on HFSs are proposed using these three parameters. These newly proposed distance measures handle the relationship between the cardinal number and the element values of hesitant fuzzy set well, and are suitable to combine subjective and objective decision-making information. When using these functions, decision makers with different risk preferences are allowed to give different values for these three parameters. In particular, this study transfers the hesitance degree index to a credibility of the values in HFEs, which is consistent with people’s intuition. Finally, the practicability of the newly proposed distance measures is verified by two examples.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Jussupow ◽  
Kai Spohrer ◽  
Armin Heinzl ◽  
Joshua Gawlitza

Systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly support physicians in diagnostic decisions, but they are not without errors and biases. Failure to detect those may result in wrong diagnoses and medical errors. Compared with rule-based systems, however, these systems are less transparent and their errors less predictable. Thus, it is difficult, yet critical, for physicians to carefully evaluate AI advice. This study uncovers the cognitive challenges that medical decision makers face when they receive potentially incorrect advice from AI-based diagnosis systems and must decide whether to follow or reject it. In experiments with 68 novice and 12 experienced physicians, novice physicians with and without clinical experience as well as experienced radiologists made more inaccurate diagnosis decisions when provided with incorrect AI advice than without advice at all. We elicit five decision-making patterns and show that wrong diagnostic decisions often result from shortcomings in utilizing metacognitions related to decision makers’ own reasoning (self-monitoring) and metacognitions related to the AI-based system (system monitoring). As a result, physicians fall for decisions based on beliefs rather than actual data or engage in unsuitably superficial evaluation of the AI advice. Our study has implications for the training of physicians and spotlights the crucial role of human actors in compensating for AI errors.


Author(s):  
Dalal Hamid Al-Dhahri, Arwa Abdullah Al-Ghamdi, Mogeda El-Sa

This study aims at investigating the relationship between cognitive biases and decision making from a sample of gifted secondary students. It also aims at identifying the level of students’ cognitive biases and decision making and the differences in these two areas based on different classrooms. Random sampling was used to collect data from 139 female secondary students from the gifted group. Their age ranged between (16-18) with an average of (16.6), A descriptive method was adopted in the study. The research tools used consisted of DACOBS David Assessment of Cognitive biases Scale (Vander Gaag. et al., 2000), translated and standardized by the present researchers, and Tuistra’s decision making scale for teenagers (Tuinstra, et al., 2000). The findings of the study show a negative correlation between cognitive biases and decision making. Also, there were no differences between cognitive biases and decision making scores based on different classrooms. The study also shows a low level of students’ cognitive biases and a high level of decision making. The study recommends activating the role of mentors and students' counseling, planning for the values and behaviors that need to be acquired by students by including them in the annual goals of the school administration and participating in societal awareness and education.


Author(s):  
Dimitris Folinas ◽  
Mohammed Althrawa

This chapter has two main aims: first, to explore the role of various economical, financial, and strategic forces influencing firms towards diversification and specialization decision making within the Saudi Arabian manufacturing industry, and second to assess the challenges for both types of companies at the time of decision making and afterwards. Surveying 100 decision makers in the industrial cities of Riyadh using questionnaires developed for both groups, the chapter initially attempts to identify the factors that had the greatest impact on firm performance based on firm returns on investment. Several factors were found significant; first, attempts of specialization were found associated with risk avoidance and managers craving to achieve industry dominant economic features, whilst results show an increased concern among diversified firm decision makers towards changes in import and export policies and regulations. Moreover, industry type was found effective in managerial responses as they weigh the role of the factors presented to the direction of the expansion made.


Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti

In this chapter, the author argues that the ill-grounded explanations agents sincerely offer for their choices have the potential for epistemic innocence. Such explanations are not based on evidence about the causes of the agents’ behaviour and typically turn out to be inaccurate. That is because agents tend to underestimate the role of priming effects, implicit biases, and basic emotional reactions in their decision making. However, offering explanations for their choices, even when the explanations are ill-grounded, enables them to share information about their choices with peers, facilitating peer feedback and self-reflection. Moreover, by providing plausible explanations for their behaviour—rather than acknowledging the influence of factors that cannot be easily controlled—agents preserve a sense of themselves as competent and largely coherent decision makers, which can improve their decision making.


2019 ◽  
pp. 94-127
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fisher ◽  
Bettina Lange ◽  
Eloise Scotford

This chapter explains the important role that public law, particularly administrative law, plays in environmental law. This role comes about because much of environmental law requires vesting decision-making and regulatory power in the hands of public decision-makers at all levels of government. This chapter begins by providing an overview of the different constituent elements of public law: constitutional law, administrative law, the role of the EU and international law, as well the complexities of this area of law. The chapter then moves on to consider the way in which the different types of interests involved in environmental problems and the need for information and expertise provide challenges for public law. The chapter then provides an overview of four major features of public law that are particularly relevant to environmental lawyers: the Aarhus Convention, accountability mechanisms, judicial review, and human rights.


2019 ◽  
Vol 82 (6) ◽  
pp. 357-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yvonne Thomas ◽  
David Seedhouse ◽  
Vanessa Peutherer ◽  
Michael Loughlin

Introduction The importance of values in occupational therapy is generally agreed; however, there is no consensus about their nature or their influence on practice. It is widely assumed that occupational therapists hold and act on a body of shared values, yet there is a lack of evidence to support this. Method The research tested the hypothesis that occupational therapists’ responses to ethically challenging situations would reveal common values specific to the occupational therapy profession. A total of 156 occupational therapists were asked to decide what should be done in five common-place yet ethically complex situations, presented as scenarios for debate. Results The results show that while most occupational therapists share very general values, they frequently disagree about what to do in practice situations, often justifying their choices with different and sometimes conflicting specific values. In some cases, the same respondents espouse contradictory values in similar situations. Conclusion The extensive literature about decision-making – together with the study’s results – confirm that when occupational therapists make decisions, they draw on multiple factors, consciously and unconsciously. These factors vary between individuals. Value judgements are one part only of a complex process which includes personal experience, intuition, social influences, culture, psychological influences and relationships with both colleagues and clients.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piotr Tarka

In this article, the author conducts an empirical diagnosis of managers’ views and perceptions in the context of use of information obtained from marketing research in decision-making processes. It is argued that decision makers who take charge of management, despite their strong declarations and beliefs about the potential and usefulness of information in decisions, in reality prefer solutions based on intuition and irrational thinking. Therefore, the objective of the conducted study is to explore mechanisms of such paradoxes. However, through empirical research, the author endeavored to find the answers associated with the specific factors that are likely to favor such an unreasonable thinking and activities undertaken by managers in decision-making processes. Based on the sample ( N = 213), which contained mainly information users, it was confirmed that managers, faced with a difficulty of information processing (e.g., due to information overloading problems and requirements of analytical thinking), or narrow cognitive capacities, limited memory, and strong reliance on personal experience, look for much simpler solutions in decision making. They preferably move toward the irrational sphere of making choices. Thus, the information, obtained from research, that is available to managers is rather neglected instead of being closely inspected (scrutinized). Moreover, the greater the surprise in information derived from marketing research (i.e., the wider is the discrepancy between the value of information provided by analysts and managers’ expectations), the greater their inclination to reject any information and much greater exposure toward irrational thinking in decision making. As a matter of fact, the problems associated with information adaptation in decisions, as well as the problems of analytical thinking, put the question mark over the entire usefulness of information and further deliberate conducting of the marketing research.


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