Thinking Traps

Each of you has made a significant decision to enter your MBA program. As you reflect on the process that you used for making this decision, use the 8 elements and stages of decision making that were described in your readings to analyze your own decision making process. What can you conclude about your typical decision making process from this reflection? (Elements: purpose,questions,information,inferences,concepts,assumptions,implications,points of view)

Please identify a situation in which someone else (in your own life, in the news, or in history) has been impacted by thinking traps when making a decision. In what way have historical anchors played a role in the example that you provided, if at all? According to Campbell, Whitehead and Finkelstein, why does the way our brains work lead to poor decisions? In what ways do these processes relate to traps? Are they “traps” in the same way as described in the other readings for this week?

Thinking Traps Reflection Paper: Reflect on the most recent decision you had to make that had significant impact, and identify any thinking traps you made in the process. (If you are struggling to come up with an idea, consider the decision you had to make to attend an MBA program.)

If you have not written a reflections paper before review this resource at http://www.sophia.org/tutorials/reflection-papers