Decision-making style: habit, style or both?

This study investigates the psychometric characteristics of the General Decision-Making Scale (GDMS) on a sample of Slovak high-school and university students. Secondly, it addresses the relationship between decision-making styles and a) decision making competencies and b) mental health as validity criteria. Participants were 427 Slovak high school and university students (64.6% females). The GDMS showed a good internal consistency and its original factor structure was confirmed. Low but significant relationships between the decision-making styles were found. Two decision-making styles served as significant predictors of the general decision-making competency (avoidant and spontaneous) and another two were found to predict mental health. The intuitive decision-making style was a protective factor and the avoidant style was a risk factor.

Few studies have examined the relations between decision-making styles and decision-making quality. This study takes one approach to investigating these relations by exploring the usefulness of decision-making styles as predictors of peer-rated good decision making. Five decision-making styles were examined as predictors of dimensions of decision-making quality, which included reason-based, values-based, and creative decision making (Dane & Pratt, 2009), as well as general decision-making quality. Results demonstrated that self-reported rational decisionmaking style was positively related to peer-rated decision-making quality. Additionally, self-reported avoidant and spontaneous decision-making styles were negatively related to peer-rated decision-making quality. The results also suggest that decision-making styles may be able to predict variance in decision-making quality above that accounted for by the Big Five traits. Thus, these findings suggest that decision-making styles appear to be valuable for predicting decision-making quality. In particular, a rational, logical decisionmaking process appears to result in positive outcomes, whereas avoiding making decisions and making spontaneous decisions has negative outcomes. iv This thesis is dedicated to my parents who have always supported me in my academic endeavors. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my thesis chair, Scott Highhouse, for his support, guidance, and helpful feedback. I would also like to thank my committee members, Maggie Brooks and Yiwei Chen, for their suggestions and feedback.

2017

The objective of this study is to examine the relations decision-making styles and personality traits among a group of university students. The study group consists of 312 participants who are students of the public university. Our study was based on voluntary participation. 57% of participants were female and 43% participants were male. The mean age was 21.09±1.79 (mean±SD) years. 76% of participations said that they are responsible for the events that happen to them. Results showed that the rational style and intuitive style were significantly associated with four of personality traits, except neuroticism. The dependent style had a positive relation with agreeableness and neuroticism. The avoidant style had negative relation with extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness. The spontaneous style had a negative relation with agreeableness and conscientiousness, positive relation with and neuroticism. Female had significantly higher scores on agreeableness and neuroticism personal...

Psihologia Resurselor Umane, 22 , 2024

Research on decision-making often relies on controlled laboratory studies, which are detached from real-life scenarios. Analyzing self-reported, long-term decision outcomes from a military real-world contexts can provide a robust foundation for identifying individual factors that differentiate decision-making capabilities among individuals. The role of personality factors and decision-making styles is analyzed in the decision-making process, using the Decision Outcomes Inventory (DOI), developed by Bruine de Bruine et al. in a sample of the population of 178 active militaries, of which 135 men and 39 women. The results of the decision-making process are significantly predicted by the anxious decision-making style, i.e., people who tend to experience negative feelings during decision-making end up having better results when making decisions. The strong link between the anxious decision-making style and emotional stability is highlighted by the structure of the network used in the analysis. Since the opposite pole of emotional stability is neuroticism, we can say that people with an anxious decision-making style face a wide range of feelings specific to this decision-making style, such as fear, and insecurity, so they postpone deciding until they find the best solution.

Personality and Individual Differences, 2017

Research on decision making has been limited by the lack of consensus on how to effectively conceptualize and measure decision styles. The current study extends previous research by providing validation evidence for the Decision Styles Scale. The psychometric properties and predictive validity of the scale were evaluated across three independent samples and using three different task types (intuitive, rational, and quasi-rational). The results showed that the rational decision style was positively related to decision accuracy, creativity, decision speed, and the reliance on affectively-based information in decision making. Whereas the intuitive decision style was positively related to the reliance on affectively-based information and negatively related to depth of explanations. Both decision styles also interacted to predict decision speed and the reliance on affectively-based information such that, a high intuitive style decreased the positive effect of rational decision style on decision speed and a high rational style increased the positive effect of intuitive decision style on the reliance on affective information. The theoretical implications of these findings along with areas for future research are discussed.

The Open Psychology Journal, 2019

Each individual has unique personality traits which affect decision-making process. Those traits are defined as cautiousness, openness to experience, decision difficulty, agency, emotion neutrality, goal orientation, intuitive awareness, plan orientation, pro-activity, and rationality.The study aimed to show how established personality traits as dimensions of decision-making can be used to classify four distinct decision-making styles. The personality styles are defined as avoidant, designer, flexible, and auditor styles.A global survey was conducted to gather information on individual decision-making styles. Quantitative methods, such as tabular analysis, mean score equivalency test, correlation analysis, discriminant analysis and chi-square test for association have been used.We found that there are significant gender differences in personality styles. This is partially due to the differences in emotion-neutrality scores among men and women. Female respondents are more emotional, ...

Journal of Behavioural Sciences, 2012

Dispositional factors play a vital role in decision making styles. Some personality theorists considered decision making as an integral part of the personality. The famous personality psychologist Carl Jung is one of the early scholars whose theory on psychological types provided precious basis for scientific work on decision making styles. Jung (1976) claimed that humans problem solving is based on four functions including sensing, thinking, feeling, and intuition. Keegan (1984) introduced Jung's (1976) typology into management, pioneering psychological contribution to decision making. Similarly, McCrae and Costa (1990) while proposing the big five personality types, considered decision making ability as an integral part of the various personality dimensions.A good deal of research is evident on the role of various personality dimensions in decision making styles. The well-researched dimensions include innovativeness, self-esteem, locus of control, and social desirability (Scot...

2010

Difficulty making decisions is one of the symptoms of the depressive illness. Previous research suggests that depressed individuals may make decisions that differ from those made by the non-depressed, and that they use sub-optimal decision-making strategies. For this study we constructed an instrument that aims to measure a variety of decisionmaking styles as well as the respondent's view of him or herself as a decision-maker (decisional self-esteem). These styles and estimates of decisional self-esteem were then related to depressive symptoms. Depressive symptomatology correlated negatively with perception of self as a decision-maker. Those with higher depression severity scores characterized themselves as being more anxious about decisions, and more likely to procrastinate. They also reported using fewer productive decision-making strategies, depending more on other people for help with decisions, and relying less on their own intuitions when making decisions. Further research is needed to determine the extent to which these decision-making styles are antecedents to depressive symptomatology or are instead products of, or aspects of, the phenomenology associated with depression.

Decision making research has witnessed a growing number of studies on individual differences and decision making styles, yet the lack of comprehensive frameworks and widely accepted measures has hindered research for a long time. There is an ongoing debate on whether individ-uals' styles dynamically change across time and situations according to circumstances. Furthermore, it is an open question whether these styles are mutually exclusive. Decision style measures seek to determine one's dominant style as well as less used styles. To our knowledge this is the first study of the convergent validity of two widely used decision making style measures: The Decision Style Inventory (DSI) and the General Decision Making Style (GDMS). The direction and strength of correlation between directive, analytical, conceptual and behavioral styles as measured by DSI and rational, intuitive, dependent , avoidant and spontaneous styles as measured by GDMS have been tested. Results of the current study are compared with previous studies that have used one or both of the instruments. Correlations between styles are consistent with findings from other studies using one of the decision style measures, but the strength of correlations indicates that there is no convergent validity between DSI and GDMS.

Decision-making styles are the ways in which people make decisions. There are many approaches to analyse (dominant) decision-making styles. Some of them are more focused on the number of members involved in the decision process. In contrast, others are more focused on the way of thinking, the tolerance of uncertainty in the decision process, or the amount of information used in the process. In the theoretical part of this paper, we present several approaches to studying decision-making styles. In the practical part, we present the research results on the (dominant) decision-making styles of Croatian students, obtained using the Scott&Bruce instrument and the Rowe instrument. Some students are in the military field (army studies in Zagreb and navy studies in Split), while others are in the field of social sciences (studies of economics in Varaždin and ICT studies in Rijeka). After the data (demographic data and data related to the two instruments) were collected, descriptive statistics, t-tests with one-way ANOVA and χ 2 test were used in the analysis. In most cases, the differences in using certain decision-making styles (by both instruments) between groups considering demographic data were not confirmed. However, the analysis showed that the military students are less prone to use avoidant style than the nonmilitary students. Also, the military students more often apply conceptual style than non-military students.