BEHAVIORAL BIASES IN THE DECISION MAKING AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF OVERCOMING THEM

The article offers an overview of behavioral biases that influence different spheres of our everyday life and at different levels of decision-making. When describing behavioral biases, the authors build the logic following the possibility of influencing them: starting with non-standard preferences- the most stable pattern- and moving further to non-standard beliefs that can be fixed by companies and regulators. Next, the authors review non-standard decision making, an area that provides discussion on possible ways of debiasing when considering public policy or firms' decisions. The article tackles non-standard preferences: (1) preferences with reference points, which mean people evaluate their utility relative to the reference points, (2) time inconsistent preferences, which imply problems with self-control and preferences for current consumption rather than delayed ones; (3) social preferences, which explain how people account for benefits of other people as well as their actions and expectations. In addition, the authors discuss the consequences of people using imperfect judgments, biased or noisy, specifically tackling statistical and social judgments, and show that choice formulation and human perception of choice can lead to decision anomalies, which is the basis of choice architecture and nudging theory. The article concludes by synthesizing social and demographic features that may influence behavioral biases, which makes it possible to use them when considering a wide range of issues related to public policy or firms' strategies.