Cognitive Ability Affect Decision Making

Introduction

The topic chosen for Business Ethics assignment is, individual’s cognitive ability and decision making process.

First of all, we would like to discuss about the cognitive ability. Cognitive ability, if put in the simplest way, is the ability to think. Individual with sound mind will require no specific training for them to know how to think, as in our normal daily life, everything we faced require us to think and to make decision. Thus, cognitive ability and decision making process cannot be viewed as two different actions but we need to take it as a cycle as they are closely related to each other. As an example, in order to make a right decision, we have to think of the reasons for the action, the consequences of our action and how will that affect not only us, but people around us as well. Making decision without utilizing our cognitive skill can sometime be disastrous if the person making the decision has the real power and influence over someone or something. And, if the decision made is not right, which has brought negative effect to someone or something else, that could possibly being avoided in the first place if the decision is made by thorough consideration, and at the same time we are facing the consequences, we will need to think of what can we do, how a new decision is to be made, in order to fix the damage we have done.

Generally, cognitive ability is the ability that consistently differentiates individuals on mental abilities regardless of cognitive task or test (McDaniel. M.A. & Banks, G.C., 2010). Thus, general cognitive ability can be measured in different ways with different tests. Traditionally, cognitive ability is directly referred to Intelligence Quality which also known as IQ as well as being explained by Charles Spearman’s general intelligence factor (g) (Arthur R. Jensen, 1998). However, this perception is restricted to cognitive ability only whereby the word ‘intelligence’ in fact, has a wider meaning than cognitive ability which included emotional intelligence and practical intelligence. According to Oxford Dictionaries, cognitive is relating to cognition while cognition itself means the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses. Thus, in order to enhance our cognitive ability in order to make the right decision, one of the ways is to learn. In the case for a student, learning is a complex task that requires a student to use and apply a range of cognitive skills. A student’s ability to retain information while performing concurrent processing is often referred to working memory, which is critical to the acquisition of increasing more complex knowledge and skills. (Passolunghi, M. C., Mammarella, I. C., & Atoe, G., 2008). Beside knowledge, we can make a more acceptable decision by using self-experiences. Everything we have been through in our lives give us lessons, regardless of the nature of the decisions we have made, either right or wrong and good or bad. With these experiences, we will know how the thing is going to be if we make a similar decision in a similar situation as before.