decision-making

Nature Communications, Published online: 21 June 2026; doi:10.1038/s41467-026-74747-w People’s reward learning is shaped by context, but the cognitive origins of this bias remain poorly understood. Here, the authors provide evidence that attention may underlie these distortions by shaping how rewards are encoded during reinforcement learning.

Most people believe they can predict what they will do next. The evidence suggests otherwise.

Do you find yourself stuck in certain patterns of thought? Practicing more flexible, spacious thinking can increase your ability to choose your actions and navigate conflict.

There’s an urgent need to study how artificial intelligence makes ethical choices because it soon will make many such decisions in our stead, says computer scientist Iyad Rahwan

We often judge success by comparison with others, but evidence shows that knowing our actual scores affects emotions and self-evaluation more than knowing our relative rank.

Our Achilles Heel Why we misunderstand odds and why it matters Everyone has a weakness. A blind spot. A vulnerability. For Achilles, it was his heel. Superman had kryptonite. Ted Williams struggled with pitches low and away. But what about the average person? I often think our Achilles heel is our inability to understand probabilities. And increasingly, it’s making us more stressed than ever. I w…

There's a line usually pinned on the Roman philosopher Seneca: luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. People put it all over social media and like most things on social media, it gets repeated so often that it stops meaning anything. So let me try to make it mean something again, with a math equation and a football match that happened recently at the latest FIFA World Cup 2026. …

Why do we carry books, gym shoes, laptops, and other items we may never use? The answer may reveal how humans prepare for possibilities and future versions of themselves.

Running a handful of experiments every quarter on high-impact pages can generate measurable gains with relatively simple tooling and workflows.  At that stage, experimentation is controlled, linear, and easy to reason about.  But as businesses grow, so does the number of things worth testing. More pages, more products, more campaigns, and more teams create more...

A simple way to tell if a date will be a good long-term mate is to take notes after the first date. If the pattern seems too similar to your failed mates, do not continue dating.

There is risk in pursuing a new chapter or career pivot. There is also risk in staying where you are when your heart is nudging you elsewhere.

A new study suggests people with a history of regular substance use understand the negative consequences of their actions. However, they struggle to consistently apply this knowledge when making decisions, leading to costly and seemingly random choices.

SWARM Engineering, a decision intelligence company focused on agrifood and manufacturing, has closed a $10 million oversubscribed Series A funding round. The post SWARM Engineering Raises $10M Series A to Scale Decision Intelligence for Agrifood and Manufacturing appeared first on iGrow News .

IntroductionModern football imposes considerable demands on referees' rapid foul judgements, yet the dissociation between accuracy and efficiency of officiating expertise across different foul situations remains poorly characterized.MethodsThe present study compared 15 national-level and 15 Class-3 male football referees in three typical situations: ball-contesting, tactical foul and handball. Pa…

Researchers cracked a 50-year-old math problem scribbled by Richard Feynman over lunch. The equations show that humans are better decision-makers than scientists once thought.

What is Decision making? Decision making is the cognitive process of choosing a course of action from multiple alternatives. it's not just about "big" life choices (career, marriage, relocation) but also routine ones (what to eat, when to reply to an email). Every decision consumes mental energy, and the quality of your decision determines the quality of your life. WHY WE STRUGGLE WITH DECISIONS…

Comparative shopping for the right therapist works much better than taking the first offer, referral, or suggestion—and not just for finding the right therapist.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly entering our daily lives. As the world begins to rely on it for small decisions, such as choosing which furniture suits our garden décor, scientists are witnessing a much larger shift quietly unfolding. AI is now entering ecology, and more importantly, applied ecology, a field that supports real-time high-stakes decision-making for our planet and posterity.…