Discriminant Function for Decision Making Competence Through ‎Cognitive Biases and Social Information Processing among Pre-‎University Education Teachers ‎

      The aim of the research was to reveal the discriminant functions of cognitive biases and social information processing processes in distinguishing between different levels of decision-making competence among pre-university education teachers. The research sample consisted of 254 male and female teachers from primary and preparatory schools in Ismailia Governorate, to whom the "DACOBS" cognitive biases scale prepared by (Gaag, Schütz, Napel, Landa, Delespaul, Bak, Tschacher & Hert, 2013) and translated by the researcher, the decision-making competence scale (prepared by the researcher), and the social information processing scale (prepared by the researcher) were applied. The results had shown to development of a set of discriminant functions for decision-making efficiency and its various dimensions (resistance to framing - recognition of social norms - under/over confidence - consistency in risk perception - application of decision rules - resistance to sunk cost) through the dimensions of different cognitive biases (beliefs inflexability - jumping to conclusions - attention to threats - external attribution - social cognition problems - self-cognitive problems - avoidance behavior), and social information processing processes (interpretation of social cues - clarification and selection of goals - construction and activation of behavioral response), and all the discriminant functions inferred through discriminant analysis had good statistical significance. Some recommendations were presented in light of the obtained results.