Common problems in judgment and decision-making

Our mind is a truly remarkable thing.  It allows us to make a bewildering array of judgments and decisions with incredible skill.  It often accomplishes this, particularly in complex environments, by using a series of heuristics - information processing ‘short cuts’.  Unfortunately, these heuristics can create illusions which can lead to consistent, persistent, and exploitable patterns of error.  How these shortcuts work is mostly outside of our conscious awareness or control and therefore make them difficult to correct.  The ability to identify and reflect on the type of decision being made, in what type of environment, can allow us to avoid some of these problems.  In this session we will explore some implications of the 2-system model of thought and how to take steps to avoid predictable errors and biases.

Professor: Matthew Mulford

Matthew Mulford teaches in various HEC Executive Education programs, such as HEC Executive MBA and customized programs, which he also designs and facilitates as Academic Director.

Matt Mulford joined the London School of Economics (LSE) faculty in 1995 where he has been a senior lecturer in quantitative methods and negotiation analysis. He was a founding Dean (until 2009) of the TRIUM Global Executive MBA program - a joint EMBA from HEC Paris, the London School of Economics and New York University's Stern Business School. This EMBA is ranked No.1 worldwide by the Financial Times 2014.

He has won university-wide outstanding teaching awards at both the University of Oregon and the LSE.