Financial Decision-Making： The Roles of Intuition, Heuristics, and Impulses

This paper will add to an evolving new paradigm for financial decision-making by exploring the important roles that intuition, heuristics, and impulses play as a bridge between how the conscious and unconscious can work together more effectively in making better decisions. Historically, the roles of financial/accounting theory and cognitive psychology have been extensively studied and documented in attempting to explain individual financial decision-making. More recently, neuroscience has made substantial contributions to learning how prospective financial decisions and outcomes affect brain activity and observed decision-making behavior. The evidence from neuroscience indicates that up to 90% of our decisions are initiated at the unconscious level, which is only beginning to be investigated in a systematic manner. Integrating these findings from multiple disciplines, including recent contributions from neuroscience, has many implications, not only with respect to personal and corporate financial decisions and how markets work, but also as an essential component in the tool box of the general decision maker.