Focus Article: Taking Stock of Naturalistic Decision Making

Abstract

We review the progress of naturalistic decision making (NDM) in the decade since the ®rst conference on the subject in 1989. After setting out a brief history of NDM we identify its essential characteristics and consider ®ve of its main contributions: recognition-primed decisions, coping with uncertainty, team decision making, decision errors, and methodology. NDM helped identify important areas of inquiry previously neglected (e.g. the use of expertise in sizing up situations and generating options), it introduced new models, conceptualizations, and methods, and recruited applied investigators into the ®eld. Above all, NDM contributed a new perspective on how decisions (broadly de®ned as committing oneself to a certain course of action) are made. NDM still faces signi®cant challenges, including improvement of the quantity and rigor of its empirical research, and con®rming the validity of its prescriptive models. Copyright # 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. key words naturalistic decision making; recognition-primed decisions; coping with uncertainty; team decision making; decision errors; decision training; research methodology The study of decision making is studded by three-letter acronyms designating sub-disciplines which evolved partly as extensions of preceding sub-disciplines, and partly as a reaction to them: the once-popular CDM (Classical Decision Making), BDT (Behavioral Decision Theory), JDM (Judgment and Decision Making), ODM (Organizational Decision Making), and, most recently, NDM (Naturalistic Decision Making). The emergence of each sub-discipline can be conveniently traced to the publication of books or papers signifying the time at which theory and research pursued more or less in isolation gathered suf®cient mass and coherence to attract wider attention. CDM can be traced to Bernoulli (1738) and, more recently, to Savage (1954) and von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944). BDT and JDM have their origins in Edwards (1954) and Meehl (1954).

Decision inertia: Deciding between least worst outcomes in emergency responses to disasters

“…By researching ‘natural’ environments where the researcher cannot manipulate rigorously defined independent variables, nor quantify objective dependent outcomes, the objectivity of research conclusions is reduced. There is a risk that researchers’ interests could bias the interpretation of the data, creating the potential for unreliable or invalid findings (Lipshitz et al ., ; McAndrew & Gore, ), as researchers continually return to and attempt to explain the data, thereby risking post‐hoc rationalization and assumed significance. Likewise, it is possible that the ability to immerse oneself in the data, with the freedom for methodological flexibility, is a strength for NDM research that primarily desires pragmatic solutions derived from the data to help practitioners.…”

“…If the behavioural implementation of making a decision is the execution of action (Lipshitz, Klein, Orasanu, & Salas, ; Yates, ), then failing to make a decision (e.g., making an executive choice) is when action execution fails. Traditional decision‐making research has helped psychologists to understand the conditions under which decisions are likely to be actioned in a static, closed environment, where decision‐makers have the opportunity to analyse the choice context and select an optimal course of action (e.g., expected utility theory; Von Neumann & Morgenstern, ).…”

Information sharing in interteam responses to disaster

“…Conversely, there may be times when too much information is available, placing strain on decision‐makers already operating under cognitive constraints due to environmental complexities (Klein, ; Lipshitz et al ., ). According to Data/Frame Theory, adopting a ‘frame’ or internal perspective to make sense of an event can reduce cognitive effort by allowing people to be selective over what information they attend to and how it is interpreted (Klein, Moon, & Hoffman, , ).…”

“…Naturalistic decision‐making (NDM) seeks to describe how decisions are made in dynamic real‐world contexts characterized by time pressure, risk, uncertainty, and lack of excessive or incomplete information (Klein, ; Lipshitz, Klein, Orasanu, & Salas, ). Findings from this domain highlight the importance of having access to relevant information for developing an accurate understanding of what is happening and how this might progress (referred to as situation awareness or SA; Endsley, , , ) so that decisions and actions taken are appropriate to the situation (Rankin, Dahlbäck, & Lundbery, ).…”

A conceptual model for generating and validating in-session clinical judgments

“…Important insights on the accuracy of intuition have emerged from naturalistic studies of professionals charged with making difficult decisions in complex clinical contexts (Klein, 2008; Lipshitz, Klein, Orasanu, & Salas, 2001). However, the majority of clinical decision-making research has focused on clinical judgments or decisions that are made outside the therapy session, such as making a diagnosis or conceptualizing a case (Garb, 2005).…”