HBS has published a Working Paper by Chugh, Milkman, and Bazerman on How Can Decision Making Be Improved?
They pose the problem as follows:
If we all behaved optimally, costs and benefits would always be accurately weighed, impatience would not exist, gains would never be foregone in order to spite others, no relevant information would ever be overlooked, and moral behavior would always be aligned with moral attitudes. Unfortunately, we have little understanding of how to help people overcome their many biases and behave optimally.
The article discusses System 1 and System 2 thinking and how we can move from one to the other.
System 1 refers to our intuitive system, which is typically fast, automatic, effortless, implicit, and emotional. System 2 refers to reasoning that is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical.
