Master your Decision Making & Critical Thinking Skills

This course contains very limited use of AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools. To help locate relevant research papers, for slides and infographics, and minor language edits.

Make Better Decisions. Think More Clearly and Critically. Solve Problems More Effectively. Reduce Decision Noise.

Good decision-making is not just about intelligence, experience, or having more information.

Even smart and experienced people can be influenced by cognitive biases, mental shortcuts, logical fallacies, overconfidence, and decision noise. We can miss important evidence, jump to conclusions, frame problems badly, or become too confident in judgments that feel right.

The good news is that we can learn to think more carefully.

This research-based course brings together ideas from psychology, cognitive science, behavioral science, and behavioral economics, to help you strengthen your critical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving skills.

You will explore how judgments and decisions are actually made, why they sometimes go wrong, and what you can do to improve the process.

You will learn about cognitive biases and heuristics, including when mental shortcuts help us and when they can mislead us.

You will examine logical fallacies, and learn to recognize weak reasoning, questionable arguments, and conclusions that are not fully supported by the evidence.

You will also learn about Decision Noise: unwanted variation in judgments that should ideally be similar. Bias and noise are different problems, and both can reduce the quality and consistency of important decisions.

We will also look at the roots of human decision-making, and why some patterns of thinking may have been useful in one context, but can create problems in another.

Most importantly, you will get several tools and techniques to help you with all these problems.

You will learn practical ways to challenge assumptions, reduce bias, examine evidence more carefully, consider alternative explanations, structure difficult decisions, and approach problems from different angles.

You will also explore practical problem-solving techniques that can help you move beyond obvious answers and think more creatively when the situation calls for it.

Throughout the course, research is connected to practical examples, exercises, and realistic situations so that you can apply what you learn, rather than simply remember a list of theories.

This course is designed for leaders, managers, employees, business and management students, and anyone who wants to become a sharper and more thoughtful decision-maker.

You do not need to become perfectly rational. None of us can.

The aim is much more practical: to notice more, question more, reason more carefully, and make important decisions with greater clarity and confidence.