Mistakes and the Psychology of Decision Making Project Ideas

This week's demo day on November 13th is on Mistakes and the Psychology of Decision Making! I will be discussing project ideas and how you can join our demo day this week.

Project Ideas

1. Mistakes and the Mental Models Behind Them

Have you ever made a silly mistake before, and it left you wondering, why did I do that? Mental models are just models of how we think. Think deeply about your thought process and how it caused you to make that mistake, and how you can prevent those same mistakes from happening again.

Example: You saw one of your friends eat a bunch of unhealthy food, so you eat a bunch of unhealthy food as well and get sick. The mental model attributed with this mistake is peer validation where you are more inclined to find something to be acceptable if your peers do it. The way to prevent this from happening in the future is to always use critical thinking even when it comes to people you know and trust since they can make mistakes as well.

2. My Bad!

Share a mistake you made and what you learned from it! What happened? Why? How did you go about resolving the problem?

3. How to Make the Best Decisions

As we talked about before, mental models are models of how we think. We need mental models because reality is infinitely complex, and we need some way of understanding it even if it is simplified. An extremely useful project idea is discussing ways to shape your mental models to make the best decisions.

Example: You really like playing video games, and you don't really like doing math. One way you can start motivating yourself to like math more is to change your mental model of how you think about math and video games.

4. What is a Mistake

This project is where you write about what you think of as a mistake. The actual definition of a mistake is “an action or judgment that is misguided or wrong.” However, what people think of as “misguided or wrong” will vary from person to person.

Would having regret be a sufficient condition for making a mistake?

What are the necessary conditions for a mistake?

5. The Mind of a Perfectionist

A perfectionist is someone who is essentially trying to not make any mistakes. In this project you could discuss the mind of a perfectionist, and whether or not it is helpful to have a perfectionist mindset.

Questions to answer:

1. What is a perfectionist?

2. Is it possible to fully be a perfectionist?

3. Is it useful to be a perfectionist?

6. Common Mistakes

This article is about common pitfalls the humans run into because of natural instincts in our psychology. In this project you would talk about some common themes of mistakes, why they are caused, and how to counter them.

Regrets of the dying would be one potential source for common mistakes.

Questions to answer:

1. What are the most common mistakes that are made?

2. How can you reprogram your own psychology to achieve your goals most effectively?

There are endless project ideas and questions to ask relating to Mistakes and the Psychology of Decision Making. Learning and digging deeper into these subjects can give you a lot of insight into your own psychology, and why you do certain things. You can participate in demo day by going to wequil.school and joining our Slack group.