What Goes Into Our Judgment When Making Decisions

(Estimated reading time: 8 minutes)

Almost every single moment, we have to make certain choices, from small things such as picking what clothes to wear or what to eat to larger things in life such as starting a family or ruining the one we have. We may not give so much thought about them when we make them, but we do it every time. Those decisions can affect us directly or indirectly, maybe right after we made them or after a long period of time. Or they may not affect us at all.

This is not about judging whether a particular course of action is unethical or not, if it is right or wrong, or if it is beneficial or not. Nor is it about how to make good or better decisions. We will also not discuss anything about how our judgment can be influenced by outside elements or by our emotions, it is a point of another discussion. We should start by saying that each one of us has the liberty to choose the standards to follow in how we live our lives. We say that we each have a particular "philosophy" in life, principles that guide us, standards that serve as our basis on how we act towards certain situations. And we learn them as we grow older and gain more knowledge of the world we live in. The point is we all have certain criteria that serve as the basis of those decisions. We may not think about them a lot, and habits can shape the way we decide, but we make judgments based on some set of measures that we have learned or acquired regardless of whether we are conscious about them or not.

We can say that basically, two things can influence us on making a particular choice: what will make us happier and what we deemed is more virtuous or right. Most of the time we learn that these two things are opposites, what we think can make us happier is not always the right thing to do in a given situation. It can be a struggle for us to weigh in on how we can both do the right thing and how it can also make us happy. Also, when we go under a desperate moment or a grave danger, we tend to act on our instincts, a fight or flight situation. It is either escape the danger or fight your way through. But there is a lot more in the way we humans think. We give reasons for the things we do to justify them and validate our actions. And one way or another these reasons shape the way we make our decisions.

First, let us give an example: when choosing what to eat, we often look for the tastiest, sweetest, or savory food we can get than considering the actual nutritional value of what we want or need to eat. This is a small decision to make, but still, most of us are confronted by making a choice about this almost every day. Ever thought of having a pancake for breakfast because of how much you crave it? How often does it happen that we crave something and we immediately want to satiate that craving? This is an example of how pleasure affects us in our decision-making. Our craving means a need for a pleasing sensation, and we think that nothing could be so bad when it feels so good. Pancake tastes good, so why not have them for breakfast? Simply put, when deciding on certain things, we choose what can make us happier. There are healthier options for breakfast than pancakes, but we will still want to have them. Or in different situations, we choose what will boost our ego, like when we choose to stand with certain assumptions no matter how others may prove them wrong or unreasonable just because we take pride in having them while thinking that we are proving a point. All in all, we choose things depending on how much pleasure we can get.

Let's go to the next one: let us say, you get a memo from your boss at work for being tardy. You are doing well the next day, after making some adjustments, and think that you will just arrive on time. Then as you are crossing the street in front of your building you see an old, frail lady with a heavy handbag who is having difficulty crossing the street. You are just a minute away from the front door of your office. Assuming that you are not a sociopath but one who likes helping others, you risk running late again for helping an old lady. Tough choice. So here is another factor: we make choices depending on how much we can benefit from them. Can we benefit the most by helping the old woman cross the street or to ignore her and going straight to the office? Somehow it is similar to the first one, though this is much more than gaining pleasure. When making a career path, we choose a job depending on how much it pays, we look for the more financially viable ones, the more material gain we can get. We rarely choose a more fulfilling career, the one we get to enjoy more. Or consider this: we withhold some truth from a friend because telling her can be hurtful or painful for her. We think we won't lose anything when we don't tell her the truth, instead, we think that withholding the truth from her can be helpful at that moment and that it can even be good for your friendship. We can say that when choosing between two or more alternatives, we choose the least "evil" or the least that can adversely affect us. This is to say that we let our decisions be guided by thinking about what we can gain or lose when making them.

Around us, we see people making "weird" decisions or even "wrong" ones, and we judge them by our own measure. We keep on hearing about people, of every gender, cheating on their partners when they somehow know that it can ruin their relationship. And they even do it even if there seems nothing wrong going on with their families or partners. In another simpler situation, many people cut in line when they see an opportunity to do so, or when they get frustrated with a long queue or whatever reason they have. Most of us accept the idea that there is nothing wrong when it comes to killing animals for food, though many are having a change of heart regarding this. Again we are not talking about whether killing animals for food is unethical or not. But, look at the people who do it just for sports. Killing other sentient animals is a source of entertainment for them without having any remorse. And lastly, we all lie. We lie to ourselves and to each other. Why do we choose to do those things? The reason behind this is simply because we can. We are confident in our capabilities that no matter the consequences that certain decisions may bring, we proceed to execute our choices.

Going back to killing animals for useful stuff such as food, we give many reasons on why or why not we should do it. There are lots of arguments on opposite sides and all have merits to support their point of view. This is one tough topic to discuss. Maybe the main argument we can find supporting the idea that it is fine to kill animals for our benefit is that nature, god, or whatever force there is behind our development as humans, put us on the top of the food chain. And because of that, we must have the right to use those beneath us for our benefit. The basis here is the appeal to nature. Life eats life, that is how nature works. And being at the peak of the natural world gives us the autonomy to decide on how we must manipulate the things around us for our survival. We can say that from here, how we make decisions can be under the wholly of nature itself. We make choices because we feel and we believe that it is only natural for us to do so.

And so there go some of the things that we can say have influence in the way we decide on things. There are a lot more, for sure. We can also see that those arguments too can run into different problems if we think further. Just because we are capable of doing things, does that mean we should do so? Is it always good to always seek the things that can make us the happiest? Does being at the advantage gives us the right to do things for our own good? Might be right, then? These questions may or may not play on our minds when we make choices in our lives, but certain things definitely influence the way we think about things. We should be aware of them if we want to make better judgments.

As we gain knowledge and experience around the world we live in, we change and improve our perspective. We adjust our standards as we understand how things work around us. Depending on the outcome, we may or may not regret the choices that we make. They may or may not have any immediate effects on us or the people around us. But let us not let forget that we are the only person accountable for the decisions that we make. Whatever the outcome may be, we, the ones who make the decisions, have the whole responsibility for them.

What Goes Into Our Judgment When Making Decisions by Leandro Angelo Castro is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.