Case Study 2 — Chapter 24: Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Amara: The Offer

Background

March. Amara's field placement supervisor Marcus brings up, at the end of a supervision session, that the community mental health organization has a part-time practicum coordinator position opening in the fall — a paid position, unusual for MSW students, that would add approximately twelve hours per week to her existing field placement. The role involves coordinating field placement logistics for other students, doing some peer supervision, and working with the clinical director on program development.

He is not formally offering it to her. He is telling her it exists and that, if she wanted to apply, he thought she had a reasonable chance of getting it.

She has two days before the application deadline.

The Initial Response

Amara's first thought, which she notices within seconds of Marcus finishing: Yes.

Her second thought, which arrives almost simultaneously: Is that the right answer, or is it the first answer?

She has been practicing distinguishing these. Her history — the caretaker role, the approval-seeking, the tendency to say yes before knowing what she was agreeing to — has made her cautious about first answers. She does not automatically say yes. She asks Marcus if she can think about it overnight.

On her walk home, she applies the chapter's framework.

Source of difficulty: This is not primarily a values conflict or a fear problem. She actually knows what she wants. The question is whether the first answer — yes — is based on sound reasoning or on familiar patterns. She needs to determine whether she wants this because it is genuinely a good opportunity or because: - It is offered by someone she respects and she wants to please him - It has the shape of an achievement she should want - Saying yes is easier than the ambiguity of declining and continuing to look

This is a confirmation bias concern: she may be about to gather evidence in support of a conclusion she reached in the first three seconds.

The Disconfirmation Exercise

Amara deliberately runs disconfirmation. She asks: what would have to be true for this to be the wrong decision?

She generates: 1. Adding twelve hours per week to her existing load would prevent the depth of study her hardest courses require. She is carrying Advanced Research Methods and Trauma-Informed Practice simultaneously — both demanding. 2. The practicum coordinator role is administrative in large part. Administrative work is not clinical work. She is in the program to build clinical skills, not coordination skills. 3. The opportunity is compelling partly because Marcus offered it. If a stranger had posted this opportunity on a job board, would she have applied? 4. The pay, while useful, is not what she needs most. What she needs most is protected time and sleep.

She sits with these for thirty minutes. Then she runs the confirmation side:

The peer supervision component is genuinely clinical in character — it involves working with other students on their case conceptualizations, which is high-quality reflective practice.
The program development work with the clinical director is the kind of systems-level work she has been curious about — whether the field could be changed at the structural level, not only the individual client level.
The pay reduces her loan draw from next semester, which reduces long-term debt. This is not nothing.
Marcus thought she could do it. He has supervised many MSW students and his assessments of capability are reliable.

The Values Clarification

Amara identifies what's actually in tension: depth vs. breadth. Her program in her second semester is demanding, and adding a significant commitment risks spreading her too thin. But the opportunity is in her domain, in her placement site, and involves skills she wants to develop.

She applies the regret minimization: At age 40, looking back — would I regret not taking this? Would I regret taking it?

The age-40 view: if she declines and the role goes well for whoever takes it, would she regret the choice? Possibly a small regret. If she accepts and her academic performance suffers, would she regret it? Also possibly. Neither regret is large.

This tells her the decision is closer than the initial yes suggested — but it does not tell her the answer.

She calls Sasha.

The Conversation with Sasha

Sasha listens. Then: "What would you tell your client to do if they came in with this?"

Amara laughs. "That's a therapist's question."

Sasha: "Yes."

Amara thinks. "I'd ask them to separate the opportunity from the person offering it. Would you apply for this if a stranger posted it?"

Sasha: "And?"

Amara: "Probably not. Not at this stage. The administrative load isn't what I need right now. I came here for the clinical hours and the academic depth. This would trade some of that for systems exposure I could get later."

Sasha: "So why are you still considering it?"

Amara: "Because Marcus offered it. And because saying no to Marcus feels like disappointing someone I respect."

Sasha: "Is disappointing someone you respect a good reason to accept a significant commitment?"

Amara: "No."

The Decision and the Conversation

The next morning, Amara tells Marcus she is not going to apply.

She offers a brief, clear rationale: the additional twelve hours would compromise the depth of study she's prioritizing this semester, and the administrative components, while valuable, aren't the primary skills she's building right now.

Marcus listens. He says: "That's a good reason. I appreciate that you thought it through rather than just saying yes."

Amara says: "I noticed I wanted to say yes immediately. That was information."

Marcus: "Mm. What kind of information?"

Amara: "That I was responding to who was offering, not to the offer."

Marcus is quiet for a moment. "A lot of early-career clinicians make decisions based on who they want to please rather than what's right for them at the stage they're at. You just named it in yourself and made the call. That's not a small thing."

The Reflection

Amara writes in her journal afterward:

The right answer was no. I think I knew this within about twenty minutes of the disconfirmation exercise. What took the rest of the time was permission.

I needed to verify that the no was grounded in sound reasoning rather than fear or avoidance. I needed to steelman the yes to be sure I wasn't avoiding the opportunity out of anxiety about load. When I steelmanned it and found the yes genuinely less compelling than the no, that was the answer.

The Sasha conversation wasn't really about Sasha's advice. It was about hearing myself say the answer out loud. When I told her what I'd tell a client, I was telling myself.

Marcus's response mattered too — not because I needed his approval, but because I needed to know whether declining would damage the relationship. It didn't. He respected the reasoning. Which is what a good supervisor does.

What I'm most interested in: I almost said yes in the first three seconds, without any of the reasoning. The first answer was not wrong because it was fast — it might have been right. The problem was that it was based on the relationship, not the decision. Slowing down and doing the analysis let me verify that the first answer was, in this case, not the right one.

The next time a first answer arrives quickly: I want to remember this. Not to distrust fast answers — sometimes fast answers are pattern-recognition, not rationalization. But to distinguish between intuition from genuine experience and intuition from familiar coping patterns.

Analysis Questions

Amara's first answer — yes — was immediate and felt decisive. She chooses to verify it rather than act on it. The chapter distinguishes expert intuition (pattern recognition in regularized domains with reliable feedback) from intuition that is a rationalization of preference or familiar coping. Which category does Amara's initial yes fall into, and why?
Amara's disconfirmation exercise identifies a key question: "Would you apply for this if a stranger posted it?" The chapter notes that confirmation bias causes people to gather evidence for conclusions reached in advance. How does this reframing question function as a disconfirmation tool? What specifically does it reveal?
The regret minimization exercise produces the finding that neither regret (taking or not taking) would be large — the decision is "closer than the initial yes suggested." What does the symmetry of regret reveal about the decision's structure, and why does Amara correctly conclude that symmetrical regret doesn't tell her the answer?
Amara describes the Sasha conversation as "hearing myself say the answer out loud" rather than as receiving advice. What psychological function does this verbal externalization serve in decision-making? The chapter notes that some decision difficulty arises from ambiguity about what we actually think or want — how does Amara's conversation address this?
Marcus's response — "You named it in yourself and made the call. That's not a small thing" — frames Amara's decision process as a competence demonstration. How does making a good decision based on sound reasoning (rather than on the desire to please the person offering) reflect Amara's development across the book's arc? What specifically has changed from her earlier pattern of approval-seeking?