PSYC 215 Chapter 4: Chapter 4 - What You Do, And What It Means
Document Summary
Chapter 4: choices & actions the self in control. Human behaviour often guided by ideas, which is to say that it depends on meaning. Culture: network of meaning, and human beings who live in culture act based on meaning; that is what makes them different from other animals. Meaning: depends on language and is therefore learned only through culture. Making choices: two steps of choosing. 1) whittling the full range of choices down to a limited few done quickly. Risk: potentially good choice will be rejected without careful consideration. 2) careful comparison of the highlighted option. 2) temporal discounting: greater weight give into the present over the future. 3) certainty effect: greater weight given to definite outcomes than to probabilities: people tend to put undue weight on things that are certain. 4) keeping options open: some people prefer to postpone hard decisions and keep options. People anticipate less regret over doing nothing than over doing something.
