BEST DECISION MAKING WITH COGNITIVE MAPPING

Decision making is the activity that always we have been doing in our life. Making decision generally means as make a judgment about what should do under a few alternative (HARRISON, 1996). Sometime this decision is very important and determining factor of suces in the future. Considering the importance of one decision, a decision makers hope that he or she can make an optimal decision. However, many decision makers often only base simple and easy way indecision making process. There heppened due to limited capability in procesiing information so that they only adapt simple way to overcome complex problem. Base on this phenomemonon, decis,ion maker bahavior wiil be colored by judgmental bias when they faced decision alternative. This bias called heuristic. There are there generel heuristics that effect virtually all individuals. Fisst. The Availability Hauristic, second, The Representativeness hauristic and the last is Anchoring and Adjustment. They wiil explains in next part. Hauristic or bias eill bring decitision maker to bad decision.
In this paper, author provide two kind of solution to solve this problem. How to make best decision. There are two way to make best decision, first with normative decision-making process. This model of decision making just presented assumes that we follow tnhere six steps is (1) perfectly define the problem, (2) identify all criteria, (3) weidht the criteria, (4) generate alternative, (5) rate each alternativen on each criterion, (6) compute the optimal decision. The second way, we can use cignitive mapping. This tools can help a decision maker to make best second. Cognitive mapping emphasized on connitive presentation as aform of causality interaction. Causal map showed causality ralation among several concepts. The c,oncepts that considered by a decision maker has interaction then connected throungh arrow. Same research show that cognitive mapping can decrease or eliminate bias. After that, decision maker get best or optimal decision.

Biases: Judgmental Heuristic

Kahneman and Tversy (1981) sunggest that people rely on a number of simplifying stategies, or rules of thummb, in making decision. These simplifying srategies are called heuristics. Individuals that decision making suggested develelop rule of thum to reduce the information-processing. There rules of thum provide a decision maker with effcient ways of dealing with complex problem that produce good decision a significant propottion of the time. However, heuristic also lead to systematically biased outcomes. A cognitive bias refers to situation in which a heuristic is inappropriately applied by an individual in reaching a decision.
a. The Availability Heuristic. This bias happen when someone who make decision rely on an event that evokes emotion and is vivid, easily imagined and specific will be more “available” from memory than will an vwnt that is unemotional in nature, bland, difficult to imagine, or vague. The availability heuristic can be a vary useful decision making strategy,m since instances of event greater frequency are generally revealed more easily in our minds than events of less frequency. Consequently, this huristic will often leand to accurate judgment.

This heuristic is fallible, however, because the avaibality of information is also affected by other factors that are not related to the objective frequency of the judgd even. These irrelecant factors can inappropriately influence an even’s immediate perceptual salience, the vividness with which it is imagined (Bazerman,1994)
b. The Respresentativeness Heuristic. Decision maker asses the likelihood of an event’soccurrence by similarity of that occurrence to their stereotypes of similar occurrence. In some cases the heuristic is a good first-cut approximation. In other cases, it leads to behaviour that many of us find irrational and morally reprehensible-like discrimination. A clear problem is that individuals tend to rely on such stategies, even when this information is insufficient and batten information exists with to make an accurate judgment (Bazerman,1994).
c. Anchoring and Adjusment. Decision maker make assessments by starting from an initial value and adjusting to yield a final decision. The initial value, or starting point, may be suggested from historical precedent, from the way in which a problem is presented, or from random information. Adjusments from initial value tend to be insufficient. Thus, different initial values can yield different decision for the same problem (Slovic and Lichtenstein,1971).

These biases along with their associated heuristics. Again, it should be emphasized that more than one heuristic can be operating on our decision-making processes at any one time. We have attempted to identify only the dominant heuristic affecting aech bias. If so, we can reduce biases in our decision then we get best decison.
Normative Decision-Making Model
A a decision maker, we shoul use this model to making decision process. This model refers to how should make decision. There are sixstep involve.this step will bring us to make good decision.
• Define the problem. A decision maker often act without an understanding of the problem to be solved. When this occurs,the decision maker may solve the wrong problem. It requires accurate judgment to indentify the appropriate definition of the problem.
• Identify the criteria. Most decision requere the decision maker to sccomplish more than one objective.the rational decision maker will identify all relavant criteria in the decision making process.
• Wight the criteria. The foregoing creteria are of varying imfortance to a decision maker rational decision maker will know the relative value that they put on each of the creteria identified.
• Generate alternatives. The fourth step in the decision-making process requires identification of possible courses of action. An inapproprite amounth of seacrh time is ofthen spent seeking alternatives, creating a barrier to effective decision making.An optimal seach continues only until the cost of search outweights the value of the value of the added information.
• Rate each alternative on each criterion. How well will each alternative solutions achieve each of the define criteria? This is often the most difficult part of the decision makingprocess, since this the stage that typically requires forecating future events.Again, the rational decision maker will be able to carefully assess the potential cansequences of selecting each of the alternative solution on each of the identified criteria.
• Compute the optimal decision. Ideally, after all of the first five step have been completed, the process of computing the optimal decision consists of multiplying the expected effectiveness of each choice times the weightting of each criterion times the rating of each criterion for each alternative solution. The solution with the highest expected value should the be chosen.

COGNITIVE MAPPING
Second way that provide is cognitive mapping. Cognative mapping show cognitive presentation as a from of causality interaction (Jenkins,1998). Cognitive mapping showed causality relation among several concepts. The concepts that by a decision maker has an interaction the connected through arrow. This relation can be positive or negative so that to showed it given sign (+) and (-). Positive relation could mean factor that could cause, increase or produce other factor. Whereas negative relation could mean a factor that could aliminate, decrease or preverent other factor happen.However, this presentation overall depend on the way of someone think about relevan factor of taken decision so that each decision maker will likely different in presentation of their think mapping. This mapping will be reduce bias on decision making (Hodgkinson et al, 2002)
A cognitive map is created when an individual represents their perceived relactionship between factor using arrow and attaches numerical values to them to represent tgeir perceived strength of beliefs. As an example, consider a person who is thinking about giving up smoking, and the way they might consider the two factors “SMOKING” AND “lung cancer”. This person may belive that the former contributes strongly to the latter.
In other words, this person belives that SMOKING increases the likehood of develoving LUNG CANCER ( a positive arrow points from the cause to the effect), and the strength of this belief is reflected by the +3 value.Conversely, a factor may be perceived to be negatively related to another, in other words, have a reducing effect on it. For example, a person may think that having “CORONARY HEART DISEASE” inhibits one’s ability to “EXERCISE”.
Obviously, the greater the number of factor a person considers together, the more relationship can be indentified and the more complex these relayionships become. To develop the example above, a person’s compalte cognitive map might look like this.

-1 +3
EXERCISE SMOKING LUNG CANCER
-3
-2 +2
CORONARY
HEART


Verbally, this person’s perceived relathionship would be expressed as follows:
A.) Smoking has a slight negative effect on ability to exercise (-1)
B.) Smoking has a moderately strong positive effect in causing heart disease (+2)
C.) Smoking has a strong positive effect in causing lung cancer (+3)
D.) Exercise has strong negative effect on coronary heart disease (-3)
E.) Coronary heart disease has a moderate negative effect on ability to exercise (-2)
Of course, this representation is entirely dependent on the way that this person things about the factors that determine their decision to give up smoking. There are numerous other factors which have connections whit the factors above that could have been incorporate in different ways if someone else had been constructing in the map. This is a “good” cognitive map however, because it represents the way an individual thinks about the problem.

KEY:
A key is provided to help you.
+
A B B C
Cause s/ increases / Eliminates / reduce
Contributes to /prevent (negative)
(positive)


Conclusion
This paper showed that how make best decision. It;s rather difficults cause sometime individual tend to adapt simple way to overcome complex problem. This bias called heuristic. There are three general heuristics that effect virtually all individuals. First, The Availability Heuristics, second, The representatives Heuristic and the last is Anchoring and Adjusment.
There are two way to make best decision, first with normative decision-making process. This model of decision making just presented assumes that we follow these six steps is (1) perfectly define the problem, (2) identify all criteria, (3) weight the criteria, (4) generate alternatives, (5) rate each alternative on each criterion, (6) compute the optimal decision. The second way, we can use cognitive mapping. This tools can help a decision maker to make best decision. This mapping will be reduced bias on decision making.
Reference
Bezerman, Max H. 1994. Judgmental in Managerial Decision Making. Singapore. John Wiley& Sons, inc.
Harrison, E. Frank. 1996. A Process Perspective on Strategic Decision Making. Management Decision. 341/1:46-53.
Hodgkinson, Gerard P., Nicola J. Bown, A. John Maule, Keith W. Glaister dan Alan D. Pearman. 2002. Further Reflections on The Elimination of Framing Bias in Strategic Decision Making. Strategic Management Journal. Vol. 23: 1069-1076.
Jenkins, Mark. 1998. The Theory and Practice of Comparing Causal Maps. Managerial and Organizational Cognition: Theory, Methods and Research. Edited by Colin Eden And J.c. Spender. Sage Publications Ltd.
Kahneman, Daniel and Amos Tversky. 1979. Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Risk. Econometrica. Vol. 47, No. 2:263-291.
Slovic, P., Lichtenstein, S. 1971. Comparison of Bayesion and Regression approaches in the Study of Information Processing in Judgement. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Vol. 6, 649-744.
Tversky, Amos dan Daniel Kahneman. 1981, The Framing of Decisions and The Psychology Of Choice. Science. Vol. 211, No. 30 (January): 453-458.


Yusnaini. 2006. Best Decision Making With Cognitive Mapping. Jurnal Ekonomi Manajemen dan Akuntansi. Volume 2. Nomor. 2 (Juli). 245-250.