ERRORS IN PLANNING AND DECISION-MAKING AND THE NATURE OF HUMAN INFORMATION-PROCESSING

This article deals with human action regulation when controlling very complex systems. ''Action regulation'' means the interaction of goal e laboration, forecasting activities, hypothesis formation, planning, de cision making, and self reflection. Typical errors and mistakes in hum an planning and decision making are reported and related to characteri stics of the human information processing system. It is demonstrated t hat a lot of very different errors and mistakes are based on a few cha racteristics of the human mind. Additionally we demonstrate that it is in no way simple to avoid these mistakes, as these information proces sing characteristics of the human mind are otherwise quite functional in a number of contexts.