The Decision-Making Process Explained

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Every accepted correction to this page is recorded with the exact change, so readers can see how the page improved over time.

1. 29 July 2026 · corrected by Emir Baycan

   Corrected a book-authorship blur for Kahneman/Sibony/Lovallo's 'noise' research, a wrong journal citation and mischaracterized study type for ego-depletion replication research, and a conflated McKinsey statistic.

   What the page claimed

   Article implied Dan Lovallo co-authored Kahneman and Sibony's 2021 book 'Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment,' when Lovallo only co-authored a separate 2011 HBR article on cognitive bias; the book's actual third co-author is legal scholar Cass Sunstein, and the 'noise' concept itself was developed later than the 2011 piece the article credited it to. It also cited a 2019 Evan Carter meta-analysis as published in 'Perspectives on Psychological Science,' when the real Carter meta-analysis was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and mischaracterized Malte Friese's 2019 paper as a 'preregistered replication' when it was actually a critical review of the evidence. Finally, it attributed a 'twice as likely' financial-performance statistic to a 2017 McKinsey study of '1,000 large organizations,' when the real 2017 McKinsey piece was an executive survey (not an organization count) that didn't contain this specific finding - the 'twice as likely' figure actually traces to a separate, later McKinsey survey.

   What was corrected

   The Kahneman/Sibony/Lovallo passage rewritten to correctly separate the 2011 HBR article (bias-focused, three co-authors) from the 2021 book (noise-focused, correct co-authors including Sunstein). The ego-depletion passage corrected to the real journal for the Carter meta-analysis and accurately describes Friese's paper as a critical review rather than a replication, while still correctly noting the real large-scale preregistered replication effort exists. The McKinsey statistic reframed to accurately attribute the 'twice as likely' finding without the specific unverified '1,000 organizations, 2017' framing.

   Why: Independent verification found this article was substantially cleaner than most in this batch - the Danziger/Levav parole-judge study, Gigerenzer's real 1/N portfolio research (14 models, 7 markets), the Challenger disaster analysis, and Amazon's 2015 two-way-door shareholder letter were all verified as fully accurate with correct figures.

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