Prior Knowledge In Decision Making

People always use prior knowledge when making decisions, assessing situations, and formulating options. One’s prior knowledge is key in decision making because it’s someone’s knowledge about the possible outcomes of a decision that greatly impact their final choice. This knowledge is described by Pierre Bourdieu as a habitus, which is a “composed of the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of those inhabiting one’s social world” (Bourdieu 15). When outside of one’s normal social world, decisions become less simple to oneself and mistakes are more common. For example, when I was visiting a friend over Columbus Day weekend in 2017 in Washington D.C., we parked my car on his street near his house and he told me I should move my backpack from the back seat of my car into the trunk

and there’s always a chance some person who you wouldn’t expect to be around here could come and take it. My decisions were based off of my prior experiences at home in my upper middle class neighborhood. Despite my upper middle class upbringing, my habitus was influenced by my current job and changed my viewpoints about education. My hometown is just south of Boston and is a predominantly white town that features people ranging from middle class to upper class in social status, but I’ve experienced things in my life to see other lifestyles. Over the last year, I worked at a Dunkin Donuts convenience store near my house, and despite living in a white town, my coworkers are all from a neighborhood in Boston that is predominantly people with English as a second language and different racial backgrounds. I also saw a much different lifestyle working there from the set of customers that come in than that from being in the town’s publics schools. For them, this job means something completely different than it does to me. For me it’s a way to make my own money to spend instead of