Hammond, J. S., Keeney, R. L., & Raiffa, H. (1998). Harvard Business Review.


Making decisions is the most important job of any executive. It is also the toughest and riskiest. Bad decisions can damage a business and a career, sometimes irreparably. Bad decisions can often be traced back to the way the decisions were made. But sometimes, the fault lies not in the decision-making process, but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human mind works can sabotage decisions. Decision makers display a strong bias toward alternatives that perpetuate the status quo. Several decision-making traps are discussed, including: 1. the anchoring trap, 2. the status-quo trap, 3. the sunk-cost trap, 4. the confirming-evidence trap, 5. the framing trap, and 6. estimating and forecasting traps.