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Human Biases in Decision Making: Avoiding the Traps
April 28-29, 2025 | 8am-4:30pm | UT Campus or Live Online | $3,350
Upcoming Sessions
Class Concentration Date Location Instructors
Human Biases in Decision Making: Avoiding the Traps Strategic Decision and Risk Management 04/28/2025 -
04/29/2025
UT Campus or Live Online Eric Bickel
Katherine Weller
WHAT DEGRADES YOUR DECISION MAKING?
The human mind isn’t wired to make high-quality decisions. Because of how our minds work, errors and pitfalls keep us from making decisions that add the most value. Understand how natural behavioral processes lead to biases, distortion, and mistakes. Explore preventive measures and techniques to reduce these biases, improve individual decisions and enrich organizational decision processes.
What You'll Learn

Biases and Impacts to Decision Making

  • Understand the ways in which your mind, personality, and social structures can degrade your decision-making
  • Discover six categories of biases that produce most of the mistakes in decision making
  • Discuss how overconfidence, confirmation bias and hindsight bias can keep us from seeking critical information and making realistic judgments
  • Understand the limiting effects of unconscious self-serving biases in yourself and others

Associations Used to Make Judgements and their Impact

  • Examine five types of associations we use to make judgments which can be misleading
  • Recognize the distortions created by relative comparisons and simplification
  • Anticipate how capacity on perception, attention, memory, reasoning and choice influence our decisions

 

 

Ways to Mitigate or Reduce Biases

  • Balance conflict and cooperation to minimize the negative effects and increase the positive influences of group dynamics
  • Develop a personal action plan for counteracting natural decision problems and reducing the impact of negative decision behaviors in your organization
Attending This Course
Individuals
Individuals
This course is appropriate for those that want to make better decisions, and develop better processes for decision making within their team or across their organization.
Teams
Teams
Organizations often send pairs or small teams, to support the launch of new initiatives.
Requirements & Credit
Requirements & Credit
There are no prerequisites for this course, but we recommend starting with our 'Decision Quality' class to learn the fundamentals. Participants earn 1.4 CEUs and/or 14 CPEs for this course, as well as a certificate of completion.
LOOKING FOR UNIVERSITY CREDIT?
Our classes are available for university credit. Please contact Elizabeth Krieg for more information.
Course Kept Me Interested
Great mix of presentation and activity to keep attention.
Tower
Instructors
Eric Bickel
Eric Bickel
Professor and Director, Graduate Program in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering
Katherine Weller
Katherine Weller
Principal, Strategic Decisions Group
Raghunath Rao
Raghunath Singh Rao
Raghunath Rao
Associate Professor, Marketing
Demonstrate Your Expertise with a Certificate
Reimbursement Options
Learn more about course credits and options for course reimbursement. Get tips on the best way to approach your manager and download a customizable template to facilitate making the ask.
Course Location
In person courses take place at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center and adjoining Rowling Hall on the UT campus in Austin. These world-class facilities provide a comfortable and convenient learning environment, with direct access to the 40 acres of campus and within walking distance of downtown Austin. Live online and on-demand course options are available for many courses.

In Partnership with Strategic Decisions Group

The Strategic Decision and Risk Management Certificate courses offered by Texas Executive Education combine The University of Texas at Austin’s academic and research depth with the decision and risk management expertise and track record of Strategic Decisions Group (SDG). Strategic Decisions Group (SDG) is a global consulting firm with expertise in strategic decision making, risk management and shareholder value creation. SDG’s collaborative approach helps clients find innovative strategies for today while helping them build decision competency for the future.

Earn a Badge
We offer digital badges for select courses, which enable you to verify your skills and achievements. When you complete this course, you will earn a digital badge that you can showcase on your LinkedIn profile.
Related Courses

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Scenarios and Forecasting: Planning for Uncertainty

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Resources
Decision Quality: Strategic Decision Making Through Framing & Alternatives
Decision Quality: Strategic Decision Making Through Framing & Alternatives
Framing and finding alternatives are key links in the decision quality chain; necessary for determining if a decision is good or not.
Decision Quality: Strategic Decision Making Through Information & Values
Decision Quality: Strategic Decision Making Through Information & Values
Decision quality is a strategic decision making process used to judge the quality of a decision at the time it is being made.
Decision Making: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Decision Making: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Why do seemingly good decisions sometimes turn out all wrong? Conventional thinking often confuses decisions with outcomes.

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