Good Judgement Comes from Experience - Essay Example

It would be superfluous to mention that brainstorming has been used by experts in different fields, such as the military, education, business, and government, to plan, design, develop, implement, and evaluate projects. Having a variety of experiences gives the individual the tools to create a balance and be able to make better choices.

In statistics, for instance, if you take an exam and you fail it, statistically speaking the probability of passing the exam the second time around is higher. The more you take the exam the better scores you should obtain. This is a comparison made to, good judgment comes from experience. The more experience you have in a given situation the better you are able to make decisions. The difference between making judgments based on experiences and taking an exam over and over again is that the exam is the same one and the situation in life may be similar but not the same.

You have different players involved, other circumstances, other decisions to take in the process of making them, and other people may be affected by the decision(s) you make. This is a big responsibility. It is not only you the one that is involved but there are repercussions on other peoples´ lives by a decision you have made or vice versa.

And, often experience comes from bad judgment. This is the other side of the coin.

This refers to making bad judgments and obtaining experiences. A marriage, for instance, you fall in love, do all the things psychologists tell you to do: communicate what you will put into the relationship and what is expected of the other person, go grocery shopping, go to religious ceremonies, cook together, wait for a year to get married and other identified tasks. After following all of the suggestions, a year later you are on the divorce statistics.

You thought you had gone through all the right steps in choosing a partner for life, but, you may a bad judgment. The marriage did not work out.

There is your experience that resulted from a bad judgment. There are no guarantees in life. The only thing that is sure is that you are going to die, although you do not know when.

There are no formulas for choosing a partner and there are no formulas for raising children. In the past, there were no schools to become a parent and how to raise your children. It was a trial and error procedure. Parents were the models liked it or not. Today, there is an increase of interest by people wanting to know how to raise their children, wanting to go to seminars where they teach strategies on raising children, and in a few decades it will be known if it was worthwhile or not. This is the first generation to start these types of strategies.

Several questions may be posed for the following example. Are there going to be any changes in a few decades? Or is the following modeling going to continue no matter how much training is offered? Is it genetic? Is it cognition? This is an example. The father is an alcoholic and beats the wife the daughter becomes a mother, marries an alcoholic and is beaten by her husband. The son marries and he is an alcoholic and beats up his wife. And this pattern continues through generations. Those were the models and those were the outcomes.

Nevertheless, you received your experiences. Did you learn from your ancestor's experiences? Did you learn from what psychologists explain concerning this behavior?

Redelmeier et al (6 Fevr, 2001), posit that:

“Cognitive psychology is the basic science that explores how people reason, formulate judgments and make decisions. The recurrent observation is that people make mistakes when they encounter complex problems. The distinctive finding is that everyday situations are often sufficiently complex to elicit mistakes. The fundamental assumption is that these mistakes are not random. Research suggests that human reasoning is susceptible to predictable errors; that is, some mistakes are made repeatedly by most people. Hence, cognitive psychology is a scientific discipline that might inform clinical judgment.

As physicians, they are able to see the whole spectrum: physical, biological, and cognitive.

There are processes that the human being has to go through. Taking into consideration the previous statements made by these physicians it is inferred that if good choices are made because of a bad experience it is a good rationale. It may also be inferred that because you make bad judgments you obtain experiences.

Although it may be possible that after going through all the necessary steps you may still make bad judgments, the probabilities of decrease are highly plausible. Using a systematic approach in making decisions based on experiences may help you decrease the bad judgments.

Live and learn, Good judgment comes from bad experience, and often experience comes from bad judgment. Do not, however, let this deter you from making decisions. People may be on different paths, different cycles in life, but it is important to make a decision and these could be I will or I will not. Action is important! Read More