ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how decisions are made, what shapes those decisions, and how people can improve their personal decision-making. Decision-making is a very complex subject that can be looked at from a variety of perspectives, and each has something to contribute to the understanding of decision-making, both in the cockpit and elsewhere. The chapter looks at what is involved in decision-making in general and some of the many factors that can have an impact on this process. Decision-making is a cognitive process by which people acquire and use information to make choices from among alternatives. The chapter explores why aeronautical decision-making (ADM) is an important concept, and discusses some efforts to understand and improve decision-making in the cockpit. The DECIDE model is a six-element decision-making process that can help to organize a person's thoughts and prevent them from overlooking potentially important facts. All of the ADM training manuals have included an instrument for the self-assessment of hazardous attitudes.
