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The human mind is prone to distortions and biases that can undermine even the most well-thought-out decision-making process. Decision researchers John S. Hammond, a management consultant, Ralph L. Keeney, a professor at the University of Southern California, and Howard Raiffa, a professor emeritus at the Harvard Business School, examine eight psychological traps that are particularly likely to affect the way we make business decisions: The anchoring trap leads us to give disproportionate weight to the first information we receive. The status- quo trap biases us toward maintaining the current situation--even when better alternatives exist. The sunk-cost trap inclines us to perpetuate the mistakes of the past. The confirming-evidence trap leads us to seek out information supporting an existing predilection and to discount opposing information. The framing trap occurs when we misstate a problem, undermining the entire decision-making process. The overconfidence trap makes us overestimate the accuracy of our forecasts. The prudence trap leads us to be overcautious when we make estimates about uncertain events. And the recallability trap leads us to give undue weight to recent, dramatic events. The best way to avoid all the traps is awareness-- forewarned is forearmed. But executives can also take other simple steps to protect themselves and their organizations from the various kinds of mental lapses. The authors show how to take action to ensure that important business decisions are sound and reliable.