Economic man ("homo economicus") in the view of classical economics is an individual who is independent, autonomous, and rational, who pursue maximum satisfaction with minimum costs. However, as a human being, we often make irrational or unreasonable decisions because of cognitive biases. The irrationality of the individual due to…

Over the last 10 years, learning analytics have provided educators with both dashboards and tools to understand student behaviors within specific technological environments. However, there is a lack of work to support educators in making data-informed design decisions when designing a blended course and planning appropriate learning activities. In…

Entrepreneurship education in higher education institutions (HEIs) increasingly aims at fostering an entrepreneurial mindset (EM) in students. However, large heterogeneity exists in conceptualizations of EM. This is a challenge for educators as it is difficult to develop instructional strategies to foster students' EM when there is no clarity…

One of the central challenges educators face today, especially in higher education, is the gap between warranted (domain-specific) knowledge and the prior beliefs students hold about certain concepts and phenomena (preconceptions). In the Internet age, students often self-directedly acquire knowledge from an increasingly large number of…

This article explores the influential role of planning on recognition-primed decision-making. Considerable prior thinking occurs and there is a need to trace and account for the cognitive processes that precede and guide decisions in dynamic outdoor environments. Seven expert leaders from four countries were interviewed about memorable decisions…

Decision making in most universities is taught within the conventional OR/MS (Operations Research/Management Science) paradigm. This paradigm is known to be "hard" since it is consisted of mathematical tools, and normally suitable for solving structured problems. In complex situations the conventional OR/MS paradigm proves to be…

Character development in higher education is a complex process. This process has often been delegated to a single course on ethics or courses on religion. The authors of this article pose an alternative higher educational process whereby character development is rooted in a series of abilities that are contextualized throughout the entire…

In four experiments, task-switching processes were investigated with variants of the alternating runs paradigm and the explicit cueing paradigm. The classical diffusion model for binary decisions (Ratcliff, 1978) was used to dissociate different components of task-switching costs. Findings can be reconciled with the view that task-switching…

Higher education ranks as Australia's sixth largest export sector, making a financial contribution of over $9 billion to the economy in 2004-2005. Surveys of potential students and projections by IDP-Education Australia on marketing higher education in 2025 are that the overseas student intake will rise by 14% to 850,000, earning in export trade…

Much research has been conducted about how and when individuals allocate rewards, yet little research exists concerning the allocation of punishment. The process of allocating negative outcomes may be different from the decision making process for positive outcomes. To examine the decision making process for allocating rewards and punishment,…

To determine if message recipients rely on heuristics when evaluating message validity, the study examines whether the differential impact of information framed in terms of losses (costs of not choosing an option) versus gains (benefits of choosing an option) might be a function of heuristic processing. Subjects, 87 undergraduate psychology…

How a person decides that s/he doesn't know something is considered. It is argued that when asked a question, one first conducts a preliminary search of memory to locate stored information relevant to the question. Three experiments are presented, and important theoretical issues are discussed. (Author/GK)

When people are asked to explain hypothetical events they tend to prefer explanations with multiple reasons (conjunctive explanations) over simple explanations. To examine this tendency, undergraduate students participated in two experiments. In the first study, students read 10 stories depicting a main character making a decision on an important…

Investigated premarital decision-making among community college students. Results concluded that premarital decisions about the number of children to have is associated with certain characteristics of the rational-comprehensive thinker, but is also associated with non-normative childbearing expectations, whether they are above or below the popular…

Examined the impact of choice on college students' cognitive task performance and affective engagement. Data from two studies supported the enhanced affective engagement hypothesis, which states that even short-term choice can increase positive affective response. Choice had no positive effect on cognitive engagement but a positive effect on…