Jie W. Weiss, David J. Weiss, Ward Edwards 1 Big decisions, little decisions: The hierarchy of everyday life Jie W. Weiss 1 , David J. Weiss 2 , Ward Edwards 3 1 California State University, Fullerton, 2 California State University, Los Angeles, 3 University of Southern California Abstract Most of the decisions we make are not momentous. Should I have that cigarette now, go to class today, go through that yellow traffic light? Our theoretical stance is that all decisions involve an attempt to maximize utility. We need to explain how such everyday decisions are made easily, without a conscious sense of weighing options. We define a policy decision as one that dictates a way of handling the smaller decisions that it governs. I might have made a policy decision to avoid a certain kind of food or drug. When that food or drug is offered, I don’t have to think much before rejecting it. People do violate their policies, either deliberatively or impulsively. Occasionally, I do eat that tempting piece of Black Forest cake. The violation is a lapse. Enough occasional lapses, and the policy collapses. © 2008 Californian Journal of Health Promotion. All rights reserved. Keywords: The decisions we face in life are often hierarchically structured. From mundane problems (Should we go out to dinner tonight? If yes, then where should we go? When we arrive, which of the menu options should I select?) to expensive, life-altering processes (Should we buy a new house? If yes, then where? When we choose a community, which houses should we consider? How much should we offer?), the structure offers cognitive savings, because a particular answer at a high level of the decision tree (No, let’s cook!) obviates thinking about the lower branches. Decisions that we make repeatedly can inspire short-cuts (I would like to have pan-fried noodles tonight, so I propose going to Supreme Dragon). In this paper, we discuss a particular class of hierarchical decisions 1 . What we will call a big decision is one that sets a personal policy. That policy will in turn simplify a host of future little decisions 2 . Examples of big decisions are becoming/not becoming a college student, committing/not committing to a personal relationship, and most importantly for this discussion, deciding upon a course of health- related behavior such as joining/not joining a fitness program, starting/not starting a diet, or becoming a smoker or remaining a non-smoker. These choices are made deliberatively, using Kahneman’s (2003) System 2. We postulate that for both big and little decisions, the decision maker (DM) employs a multi-attribute utility (MAU) model (Weiss, Edwards, & Mouttapa, this volume) to evaluate the expected utility of each possible option (e.g., should I start smoking or should I remain a non- smoker), and chooses the option offering the highest. An option is characterized by the set of consequences that the DM anticipates will occur as a result of choosing it. The utility of an option is expressed by the Multi-Attribute Utility equation: MAU = j SVj • SPj • MSj where SVj (subjective value) refers to the worth of the j-th consequence, SPj (subjective probability) refers to its likelihood, and