**2. Cognitive decision-making from a constructivist perspective**

### **2.1 Salient characteristics**

Reduced to its most basic characteristics, decision-making process consists in choosing one specific action amongst those available, than in performing it effectively to obtain the desired effect. The chosen action must be relevant since it meets a requirement. Its implementation must obviously modify the situation in the desired direction. To achieve this effect, a diagnosis must first be made. It consists of a cognitive construction that includes the information selected and processed by the decision-maker1 as in medical diagnosis.

### **2.2 A constructed choice and its consequences**

How is the choice made? The decision maker's cognitive activity expresses this preference. It refers to the constructivism theory developed at an early stage by Jean Piaget [1, 2]. This pioneering author demonstrated that cognition is far from being an innate characteristic or a predetermined choice of action.

A fundamental epistemological principle must already be laid down the appropriate action choice is not only established on the general properties of certain information. It must also incorporate situational and temporal particularisms. Such a perspective is well illustrated in decisions regarding diagnosis and decision-making issues (in medicine or engineering sciences for instance). The general properties of an illness are given by the nosography, but the particularities result from an individual examination carried out by a clinician.

Nowadays, constructivism has gone far beyond its initial target (the study of reasoning modes in infancy) to be implemented, thanks to technological progress, in social contexts [3]. This current of studies has its distant roots in the work of Vygotsky (1896−1936) in terms of the decision that will be analyzed. The introduction of reference to social groups allows us to study social decisions and social choices. Referring to groups permits to include collective problem-solving and studying group decisionmaking and its effects on population or social groups, such as acceptability of laws.

#### **2.3 Information: Collecting and formatting in a system**

This chapter studies situations in which information is organized in systems. Following a seminal work [4] and for psychologists "A system can be defined as a set of elements that interact with each other." Decision-making is studied in

<sup>1</sup> To avoid the complexity of inclusive writing, the masculine gender will be used herein. It takes a generic meaning to designate the human being. Its use is therefore not intended to be discriminatory toward anyone.

*Perspective Chapter: A Perspective on Cognitive Decision-Making in Dynamic Systems… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.108981*

self-organized systems where all information is organized into interactive systems that, at first glance, seem complex and need a cognitive treatment to be read.
