Psychological aspects of the decision-making process in construction

The paper presents selected psychological aspects of the decision-making process by construction experts. A general scheme of conduct in the decision-making process has been presented. The authors presented the most common errors in the decision-making process from the point of view of psychology and their causes. Briefly discussed were, among others, central tendency, contrast effect, groupthink, and decision-making under stress.Human abilities for abstract representation of phenomena and hypothetical-deductive reasoning have long been used in their actions. Depending on the type of decision-making situation and the point of reference, the motives for conduct and the preferences of decision-makers will be completely different [4]. Decision support is generally addressed to one of the decision-makers (a person, a group, a collective), as they may have different goals and conflicting value systems. Expert assessment should therefore be in accordance with the art of construction, reliable, objective, and as appropriate as possible for a given decision-making situation.
The problem of choosing the best, most satisfying solution from among the considered variants often occurs in engineering practice. (…)

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