Accentuate the Relevant

People need information in order to make effective choices and to feel competent in managing their own affairs Decision-making research provides tools for identifying and addressing these informational needs The tools allow formal analyses of what information is critical to particular decisions, as well as descriptive analyses of how well those facts are understood Communication should be focused on critical information that is either missing or available but not understood Decision-relevant situations range from ones posing well-formulated, imminent choices to ones in which people are trying to understand what choices are even possible This article reviews briefly the formal and descriptive approaches to dealing with such decisions Including these approaches in behavioral interventions might help people to be as systematic as they would like in their decision making It might even make them want to be more systematic