Decision Making as a Socio-Cognitive Process

Abstract

Researchers from multidisciplinary scientific fields have been puzzled by human behaviour in dynamic and complex decision-making contexts. Since the seventeenth century, several theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions have emerged. These contributions evidence the need to critically assess the rational foundations of decision theories, stemming from the cognitive basis for human heuristics and bias. This chapter focuses on how socio-cognitive theories have been introduced as analytic tools to explain individual and collective behaviours, decision rules, and cognitive mechanisms. In particular, the authors advance some arguments explaining its importance and the underlying challenges of social representations as part of the decision-making process. They propose a methodological script that stresses the social representations approach and encounters more functional and operational settings.