HappyTrack Research Lab

Decision-Making, Perception, and Artificial Intelligence

Two people can observe the same situation and arrive at completely different decisions. Why?

Observing a situation is not merely a matter of receiving information. It involves selecting, interpreting, and assigning meaning, processes influenced by what each individual knows, expects, values, and is capable of recognizing within themselves.

Differences in perception act as centers of gravity, shifting the entire flow of processes involved in decision-making. It is not, therefore, simply a matter of deciding correctly or incorrectly, but of the capacity to recognize and acknowledge the boundaries through which we interpret reality, and to understand what those boundaries can produce.

After more than 20 years in consulting and 18 years in professional development, I realize that, with the advent of artificial intelligence and the growing need for social media visibility, it is not just the way people use information and interact with one another that has changed.

What has changed, above all, is the way they interpret that information, construct meaning, and make decisions.

That is why, rather than simply proposing the construction of bridges to reach goals or creating ways for people to move from one point to another, I propose a crossing.

A decision-making journey: an AI-assisted cognitive intelligence capable of making observable, challengeable and explorable the cognitive limits that shape the formation of a decision. The aim is to make individuals aware of the mechanisms that remain invisible within the construction of their own thinking.

For without clear goals, a journey loses its direction.
Without an awareness of change, there is no reality to attain.
But without clarity, there is no coherence to sustain the journey.
And every decision becomes merely a possibility when it fails to embrace the very sacrifices that constitute it.

For beyond merely knowing the options and consequences of our choices, it is necessary to understand the mechanisms that shape them and how they play out in the relationships we envision and build. And this is the greatest impact of studying decision-making: gaining insight into the mechanisms that influence how and what we decide, prior to the impact the decision itself produces.

A decisive crossing proposes:

  • a starting point: a perception
  • a possible destination: meaning
  • a distance: interpretation
  • conditions that shift during the journey: choice and renunciation
  • risk: errors in assessment and judgment
  • need for guidance: cognitive biases
  • possibility of return: cognitive delegation
  • transformation of the traveler: cognitive responsibility and metacognition.

The goal of this laboratory is to study how AI-mediated information environments alter the cognitive processes involved in decision-making and influence the outcomes of relationships within companies.

For a crossing is not merely the path to a decision. The crossing is the continuous process in which the very capacity to decide is constructed, challenged, and reconstructed. And decisions are cognitively individual, yet socially distributed in their consequences...

Juliana Cândido, PhD

Mission

To reveal the differences in perception that influence decisions before these gaps turn into harmful errors that negatively affect people and organizations.

Vision

To become the leading international network of laboratories studying how individual mechanisms affect organizational behaviors and decisions, using real-world data, experimentation, and AI.

Composition

The HappyTrack Research Lab is composed of:

  • researchers (holding Master’s and PhD degrees)
  • partner professors
  • students
  • entrepreneurs, and
  • associated companies.

A new way of understanding decisions

The laboratory was founded on a single premise:

People do not make decisions based solely on information.

They make decisions based on how they perceive, interpret, and assign meaning to the information they receive.

Understanding these differences means understanding the invisible mechanisms that influence choices, behaviors, and outcomes.

Artificial intelligence expands our capacity to analyze data.

But true intelligence lies in understanding how human beings construct different realities from the same facts.

It is in this space that the laboratory operates.

FAQs - Research Lab

Why does the HappyTrack Research Laboratory exist?

This laboratory was created to seek answers to questions that few companies, researchers, or individuals dedicate themselves to investigating.

Not because it is an impossible field.

Not merely because it is a new field.

But because it is an uncomfortable field.

Working with differences in perception means working with different cognitive realities, different ways of interpreting the world, and different internal structures that influence decisions.

The greater the amount of information available within a given system, the greater the complexity of processing and interpreting that information to reach objective conclusions and build consensus among people, groups, and ideas.

By understanding the mechanisms, recognizing differences in perception, and identifying the foundations that underpin these interpretations, we enable:

  • greater clarity in the use of technologies;
  • greater wisdom in understanding individual limits and their social impacts;
  • greater humanization of relationships within a context of increasing automation.
What does this laboratory produce?

The laboratory produces data, information, and analyses regarding:

  • differences in perception;
  • applied cognitive intelligence via artificial intelligence;
  • the materialization of metrics to measure experience and true customer-centricity within organizations.
What does a laboratory member produce?

A laboratory member produces data, information, or knowledge.

Data is produced through collection activities carried out during educational initiatives or research conducted in business settings.

Information is generated from studies conducted using our proprietary algorithms.

The studies and analyses are carried out by associate researchers and the laboratory's founder.

Who owns the data?

Todos os dados brutos gerados e todas as análises realizadas são de responsabilidade e domínio das empresas às quais as ferramentas utilizadas pertencem.

Entretanto, após a publicação dos resultados das análises, os conhecimentos produzidos tornam-se de domínio público.

What does a participating school receive?

The participating school receives ready-to-apply educational activities, developed through thematic studies on differences in perception and on raising awareness about using artificial intelligence as a tool to support increasingly intelligent reflection.

At the end of the participation, teachers receive information about their students' decision-making patterns.

The school receives:

  • comparative analyses between students and different scenarios;
  • possible access to studies conducted in other locations;
  • new knowledge produced from the laboratory's research.
What does a student receive?

The student receives information to use artificial intelligence more assertively.

In addition, they receive:

  • their decision-making profile;
  • the results of the research conducted;
  • greater awareness of their own mechanisms of interpretation and choice.
What does a researcher receive?

A participating researcher, through an associated research laboratory, receives data to develop their scientific activities.

In return, they provide the information and results produced from this research, publishing jointly with the laboratory's founder.

Why is the laboratory itinerant?

Working with decision-making means working with different perceptions.

Perceptions are built from values, cultures, experiences, forms of relationship, interests, and practices that differ between individuals and groups.

As decisions increasingly depend on complex systems, the goal of the itinerant laboratory is to understand how these systems influence the way people see things.

The proposal is to carry out comparisons capable of revealing how individual differences influence organizational processes, collective decisions, and the construction of shared realities.

How does a new city join the laboratory?

Participating cities are chosen according to criteria related to:

  • tourist interest;
  • local development;
  • multiculturalism;
  • openness to innovation;
  • tourism strength;
  • cosmopolitan characteristics.

The choice takes into account the city's potential as a rich environment for observing different perceptions, cultures, and forms of social interaction.

Who funds the studies?

The studies are funded through institutional partnerships and companies participating in the research.

Participating companies can commission the studies and services developed by the laboratory, using these investments to fund the continuity of the research, analyses, and production of knowledge.

Publications

List available soon.

More than studying applied decision-making within a single discipline.

Knowledge through the decision-making behavior of cities.

Decision Observatory Cities​

Each city has its own decision-making culture.

The way people perceive value, choose, consume, undertake, and interact is the result of their history, culture, and social context.

By studying cities, we don't observe only companies.

We observe how different cultures construct decisions, assign meaning to experiences, and transform perception into action.

Note: We don't study cities!

We study how each city teaches people to perceive, decide, and act.

Who participates?

1 Companies

We collect data from local companies through questionnaires, interviews with executives, employees, and consumers. The goal is to map and understand the local decision-making reality.

2 Universities

In partnership with universities, we run educational labs that expand our international knowledge base and help institutions and companies become more competitive.

3 Market

We produce content and materials about the local decision-making landscape and carry out market comparisons for panel participants and partners.

Research Program Opening soon...

Istanbul   | Nice | Paris | Genève | São Paulo | New York

Chat
Hello! Welcome to HappyTrack!
Can we help you?