Environment Issues and How It Affect an Individual’s Decisions

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Environments Affect Decision Making
Environment Issues and How It Affect an Individual’s Decisions
Florida A& M University
ISS-5939
Environments Affect Decision Making 2
Environment Issues and How It Can Affect Individual’s Decisions
Decision making and how it affects our overall well being is a distinctive approach on
how we perceive life. Making a decision can be a simple task; however there are several things
that prompt us to make decisions and how to make them. There are several factors that can affect
the decisions that we make. In particular environmental issues can shape how choices are made
whether a negative or positive outcome. Some important environmental issues that affect
decision making are poverty, incarceration, health care, interlocking oppression, and
government.
Poverty is an environmental issue that can impact a person’s decision making. In the
United States there is staggering number of people living in poverty. In 2012, 47 million people
or 15% of Americans were living in poverty. These people are considered as the working poor,
less fortunate, and those of low wealth. The measurement of poverty is based on incomes or
consumption levels, and people are considered poor if their consumption income levels fall
below the ‘poverty line’, which is the minimum level necessary to meet basic needs. Living in
poverty can be very stressful and cause other issues such as mental illness, premature pregnancy,
and adolescent delinquency. These issues alone can have an emotional impact on an individual’s
judgments. Time pressure, information overload, and cognitive constraints (e.g. limited
capabilities for attention, computation, and memory) often lead decision makers to edit and
analyze complex decision making and base their decisions on a subset of the available
information (Chou & Halevy, 2014). A lack of inadequate resources can also affect the
decisions people make. Research has shown that a lack of resources in communities such as
libraries, parks, and enrichment programs cause people to make poor decision due to the
inadequate information provided.
Environments Affect Decision Making 3
Teens are now more likely to have sex prematurely which can lead to teen pregnancy
because they don’t have enrichment activities to keep them occupied afterschool. This in turn
creates more stress on the entire family because there is a greater chance the teen won’t graduate
from high school due to the responsibility of parenthood. It also creates a developmental trap
because the cycle of poverty is more likely to continue.
Male teens that do not have access to the proper resources tend to get in trouble with the
law. There seems to be a lack of motivational and life skills resources available to teens and
adults in impoverished areas. Teens in impoverished areas, especially males are not likely to
have a positive male role model to seek for guidance. When you have a lack of positive
reinforcement and an environment that is full of negativity; it becomes hard for easily influenced
teens to follow what is right. In 1980, one in 10 black high school dropouts were incarcerated by
2008 totaling 37% of black males. Researchers found that fewer than 30% of black male high
school dropouts are currently employed and barely providing for their families. When high
school dropouts come out of prison and try to find steady work, they hit dead ends in terms of
earnings.
Limited access to education in impoverished communities affects decision making as
well. People that live in poverty are less likely to graduate from high school or even attend
college. Most people that live in poverty did not complete education higher than a middle school
which limits them from higher paying jobs to provide for their families. The lack of education
creates a mentality of not knowing how to go about handling difficult situations like how to
budget so that bills are not behind which can become a frustrating problem. Individuals who
performed better on a competence test were less likely to report negative life events indicative of
poor decision making (Bruin, Fischhoff,& Parker, 2007).
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Environments Affect Decision Making 4
Lack of education creates vulnerability like predatory lending. This is seen way to often
when a person borrows money from a pay day lending agency because she has an emergency.
That loan has to be paid back the next time she gets paid which creates a cycle of consistent
borrowing every pay period. The person never gets out of the pay day loan rut. The person is
simply making a decision to keep bills paid and utilizing the resources in her environment.
Interlocking oppression is another situation that molds the way decisions are made.
Interlocking oppression or intersecting oppression is normally experienced by women. It’s a
type of discriminatory action normally initiated by gender and minorities. Interlocking
oppression devastates those living in poverty. There is a history of interlocking oppression for
minorities that dwell in impoverished communities. Interlocking oppression is sometimes a
psychological battle; the brain has to hold so much information and sometimes it could cause a
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