Reflections on Fourth Class (July 17, 2025): Perception and Decision Making (Part One)

It's critical for students to know and identify common traps or biases individuals (and teams) face when making decisions. These include the framing, anchoring, confirming evidence, sunk cost, status quo, recallability, overconfidence, and prudence traps, as well as the halo effect and self-serving bias, among others. Only when students understand these terms can they identify how to address or overcome them to make better decisions. That's why I decided to veer away from simply defining these pitfalls in a PowerPoint presentation. Instead, I invited the teams of students to "act each out" in small groups. I urged them to let their dramatic and/or theatrical abilities run amuck as they came up with a team activity that both made us laugh (and many of them did) while educating us. After short team presentations (see photo), the remaining students in the class needed to guess the name of the pitfall. A discussion followed about the nuances of each pitfall once students had made their selection. 

The assignment was explained as follows:

• Each team receives a card identifying a hidden trap or bias in decision making (which were covered in the readings assigned for class)
• The team will develop and deliver a role play (scenario) based on their trap/bias in action without identifying it by name
• The class then will identify the trap/bias by name, and offer ways to combat it

Students seemed to enjoy the activity. One student commented that "it was better than PowerPoint." Another said he was skeptical when I introduced the activity, but liked it (and got a lot out of it) nonetheless.