Title: Cognitive biases in decision making during the pandemic: insights and viewpoint from people's behaviour

Authors: S. Yamini; M.S. Gajanand

Addresses: Department of Management Studies, Faculty of Operations Management and Analytics, National Institute of Technology Tiruchirappalli, Tiruchirappalli – 620015, Tamil Nadu, India ' Faculty of Operations Management and Decision Sciences, Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli, Tiruchirappalli – 620024, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: In this article, we have attempted to study the ways in which the COVID-19 pandemic has gradually increased and impacted the world. The authors integrate the knowledge from cognitive psychology literature to illustrate how the limitations of the human mind might have a critical role in the decisions taken during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors show the correlation between different biases in various contexts involved in the COVID-19 pandemic and highlight the ways in which we can nudge ourselves and various stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. This study uses a typology of biases to examine how different patterns of biases affect the decision-making behaviour of people during the pandemic. The presented model investigates the potential interrelations among environmental transformations, cognitive biases, and strategic decisions. By referring to cognitive biases, our model also helps to understand why the same performance improvement practices might incite different opinions among decision-makers.

Keywords: behavioural economics; cognitive biases; pandemic; irrationality; information related biases; loss aversion.

DOI: 10.1504/IJENM.2024.142393

International Journal of Enterprise Network Management, 2024 Vol.15 No.4, pp.398 - 416

Received: 21 Aug 2022
Accepted: 25 Jun 2023
Published online: 29 Oct 2024 *

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