Did you know that we humans can actually think about our own thoughts? This is called metacognition, or simply, "thinking about thinking" (Flavell, 1979). Metacognition helps us become better at things like reading, writing, solving problems, and even making important decisions.
When we make decisions, we often use metacognition to help us check if we're making the right choice. But sometimes, we can get overwhelmed, especially if a task is tricky or we're tired, and this affects our ability to use metacognition well (Halpern, 1998).
How Metacognition Works
Metacognition involves three basic steps:
Self-Assessment: First, you evaluate what you already know or don't know (Siegesmund, 2017). People with good metacognitive skills usually know their strengths and weaknesses accurately. However, self-assessment can be influenced by culture and gender. For example, people from Western cultures often overestimate their abilities, while those from East Asian cultures tend to underestimate themselves (Campbell & Lee, 1988; Heine et al., 2001). Men also typically rate their performance higher than women do (Beyer, 1990).
Goal Setting: After self-assessment, you set a clear, achievable goal. Setting specific, challenging goals can boost your performance in almost anything you do (Locke et al., 1981). However, watch out for overconfidence—it can trick you into setting goals that are too difficult (Kahneman & Tversky, 1977).
Strategy Development: Lastly, you create a plan to achieve your goal and check your progress along the way. Good strategy development means learning from mistakes and adjusting your methods as needed (Blakey & Spence, 1990).
Understanding Decision-Making
Decision-making and metacognition often work hand-in-hand. When you aren't sure about a decision, your metacognitive skills help you reconsider and revise your choices (Qiu et al., 2018).
However, humans don't always make logical decisions. Our emotions, tiredness, and shortcuts our brains take (called heuristics and biases) can lead us astray (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981; Ceschi et al., 2017). For example, we often pick "good enough" choices instead of the best ones because finding the perfect choice takes too much time and effort (Simon, 1955).
Common shortcuts our minds use include:
Availability Bias: Using information that's easiest to remember rather than what's most accurate (Schwenk, 1988).
Anchoring Bias: Relying too heavily on the first piece of information we hear (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974).
Decision Fatigue: Making worse decisions after we've been making many decisions already (Danziger et al., 2011).
Affect Heuristic: Making choices based on emotions rather than logic (Slovic et al., 2007).
Also, how choices are presented can significantly affect our decisions. People typically avoid risks when they're focused on potential gains but take more risks when they're worried about potential losses (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981).
Using Metacognition in Decision-Making
Metacognition can improve decision-making by helping us recognize what we don't know, when to seek more information, how confident we should be, and how to adapt our strategies (Lee et al., 2017). For example, doctors who are aware of their thinking processes and self-check their confidence tend to make fewer mistakes (Berner & Graber, 2008).
Case Study: CollegeDate.com
Picking a college is often the first big decision many young people make. CollegeDate.com is a site designed to help students choose colleges based on their needs. It includes useful tools, such as a scholarship finder and financial advice.
However, there are ways the site could better support students' decision-making:
The homepage currently pushes users to register right away, but users usually hesitate to share personal info unless the benefit is clear. It's better to delay this until necessary.
The main search is set up to search by college name, but most students don't know exactly what college they want yet. Providing recommendations or common search criteria upfront would be more helpful.
The current alphabetical college list creates an anchoring bias because the first colleges listed might overly influence students' opinions. Showing more relevant choices first is better.
Searching by location currently requires users to sort through a very long list. Simplifying this process would reduce stress and decision fatigue.
Lastly, students usually need help narrowing down choices. According to experts, applying to five to eight colleges is ideal (College Board, n.d.). CollegeDate.com could improve by making it easier for students to find these "best-fit" colleges quickly, reducing the cognitive load and decision fatigue that happens when facing too many choices (Hick, 1952).
Conclusion
Metacognition is a valuable tool for decision-making. Websites like CollegeDate.com can use these principles to help students make better choices by simplifying decisions and guiding users step-by-step.
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