Decision-Making Under Stress

Emerging Themes and Applications

Rhona Flin, Eduardo Salas, Michael Straub, Lynne Martin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351945943
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Decision Making
• Index: Business

In our high technology society, there is a growing demand for a better understanding of decision making in high risk situations in order to improve selection, training and operational performance. Decision Making Under Stress presents a state-of-the-art review of psychological theory, in research and practice, on decision making in high pressure and emergency situations. It focuses on the experienced decision makers who deal with such risks, principally on flight decks, at civil emergencies, in industrial settings and military environments. The 29 chapters cover a wide range of perspectives and applications from aviation, military, industry and the emergency services. The authors, all international invited experts in their field, are based in research centers and universities from Europe, North America and Australia. Their common interest is in the theories and methods of a new research domain called NDM (naturalistic decision making). This volume comprises the edited contributions to the Third International NDM conference, sponsored by the US Army Research Institute and the US Naval Air Warfare Center, which was held in Aberdeen, Scotland in September 1996. The NDM researchers are interested in decision making in situations characterised by high risk, time pressure, uncertain goals, ambiguous information and teamwork. The extent to which the NDM approach can explain and predict human performance in such settings is a central theme, discussed with many practical examples and applications. This book is essential reading for applied psychologists, pilots, emergency commanders, military officers, high hazard managers, safety and emergency response professionals.

1. Introduction

Rhona Flin, Eduardo Salas, Michael Strub and Lynne Martin

Decision Making Under Stress: Emerging Themes and Applications presents a state of the art review of psychological theory, research and practice on decision making in stressful environments and emergency situations. In a high technology society, new developments are matched by increasingly challenging risks for the organisations who have to manage them and the social scientists who strive to understand them (Reason, 1997; Turner & Pidgeon, 1997). This book focuses on the experienced decision makers who deal with such risks, for example those in charge of flight decks, firegrounds, emergency control centres and warfare operations rooms. There is a growing demand for a better understanding of decision making in critical hazardous situations to improve selection, training and operational performance.

The 28 chapters cover a wide range of perspectives and applications drawn principally from aviation, the military, high reliability industry and the emergency services. The authors' common interest lies in the theories and methods of an emerging research field in psychology called NDM (naturalistic decision making). NDM researchers are interested in decision making in situations characterised by acute stress, high risk, time pressure, uncertain goals, ambiguous information and team work. "The study of NDM asks how experienced people, working as individuals or groups in dynamic, uncertain, and often fast paced environments, identify and assess their situation, make decisions and take actions whose consequences are meaningful to them and to the larger organization in which they operate." (Zsambok, 1997, p. 5).

This volume represents the collected papers from an international conference, 'Decision Making Under Stress: Emerging Themes and Applications' which was held in Aberdeen, Scotland in September 1996. The purpose of this small invited meeting of 60 delegates was to bring together European and North American researchers and practitioners, working in decision making, to exchange ideas, to present their data, to debate theoretical approaches and to develop a shared view of the future scientific demands and practical applications of this field. The conference was sponsored by the US Army Research Institute (represented by Mike Strub) and the US Naval Systems Warfare Center, Training Systems Division (represented by Eduardo Salas). These agencies were interested in the military applications, particularly as they relate to commanders who are required to make tactical decisions quickly in highly stressful, complex environments. Their objective is to derive theoretically-based instructional strategies and decision support systems to enhance decision making performance.

The conference was, in essence, the third international Naturalistic Decision Making conference, building on the two previous NDM conferences organised by Klein Associates, held in Dayton, Ohio in 1989 and 1994. These were very successful and influential meetings, and the resulting edited volumes captured not only the spirit of the debates, they also charted the advance of theory and applications (Klein, Orasanu, Calderwood & Zsambok, 1993; Zsambok & Klein, 1997). While we hoped to emulate their achievements, this third meeting was deliberately not labelled NDM, as one of our aims was to evaluate the status of NDM by considering naturalistic decision problems (specifically, decision making under stress) but with the contribution of European researchers who would not necessarily see themselves as part of the NDM clan. As has been acknowledged at previous NDM conferences, there is a significant body of European research, principally from Netherlands, Germany, UK and Scandinavia, (e.g. Frensch & Funke, 1995; Rasmussen, 1983; Rasmussen & Jensen, 1974; Reason, 1990; Svenson & Maule, 1993) which has advanced our understanding of problem solving and decision making in demanding real-world environments. This third meeting provided an opportunity for scientists from Europe and further afield (e.g. Australia) to meet and debate with a small group of leading North American researchers from the NDM community.

Certainly within the UK there has been a growing awareness of the practical potential of the NDM approach, especially within the fire service, the police, aviation and the military communities (Flin, 1996). The delegates (Appendix 1) included a number of practitioners from aviation, anaesthetics, the police and the fire service. With the exception of Glyn David, a helicopter pilot, they did not present papers but they participated fully in the discussions and the resulting chapters have been strengthened by their contribution to the meeting.

Overview

The 28 chapters have been organised thematically into five main sections. First, to set the scene and to provide a theoretical context for the volume, are those based on the presentations from the four keynote speakers (Gary Klein, Judith Orasanu, Jan Cannon-Bowers and Jens Rasmussen). They deal in turn with building and extending the theoretical framework of NDM research, from constructing more specific models, to delineating the relationship with other approaches. Klein presents the current status of the NDM framework, its historical roots and future prospects. Pruitt, Cannon-Bowers and Salas discuss the essential characteristics of NDM arguing that it represents a paradigm shift from the classical decision theory perspective. Orasanu then takes up the theme of the conference by considering the impact of stress on naturalistic decision making. Her analysis focuses on the cognitive processes in aviation decision making which may be particularly vulnerable to stress and how these 'weak links' could be strengthened. In the fourth keynote paper, Rasmussen takes a broader view of the paradigm shift, extending its reach to encompass a general movement towards a naturalistic approach, not only in decision theory but also in engineering design, organizational theory and accident research. His chapter cleverly captures the Zeitgeist which is exerting an influence far beyond the boundaries of decision research.

The remaining sections explore how the NDM characteristics (such as time pressure, uncertainty, stress and team work) impact upon the individual's choice of strategy and consequent performance. They have been organised into domains of application: civil emergencies, military command, and pilots' decision making, in the interests of readers who wished to learn first about their own work environment, before turning to less familiar applications. It is hoped that this will not obscure the significant degree of common ground between these topic areas. The final section includes more general chapters either dealing with the NDM framework or the key characteristics of decision making under pressure in a range of organizational settings. As a preview of the contents, the emerging themes and applications from the conference are briefly outlined.

Emerging themes

The resilience of naturalistic decision making under stress

The traditional literature generally concludes that stress has a profoundly negative impact on decision making. While this is true for novice decision makers performing unfamiliar tasks, when the focus shifts to experienced decision makers functioning in their normal work environments, then the resulting pattern of stress effects becomes less uniform. Undoubtedly there are components of experts' decision making which are particularly vulnerable to stressors and we must identify these, but we should also endeavour to understand the characteristics of decision making performed to a high level of competence under pressure. The individuals studied by NDM researchers are expected to take decisions in time pressured, risky conditions; it is part of their job and when they perform to expectations their accomplishments are rarely recognised or lauded. It is only when they fail in a spectacular fashion and a major disaster occurs or a plane crashes or there is a military blunder, that the potential limitations of their decision making under stress are revealed. What is of interest to selectors and trainers is the level of stress that will exceed an incident commander's 'operating envelope' and how they react under such conditions.

The apparent need is to identify decision processes and strategies that are sensitive to stress and the conditions in which stress-related decision errors are more or less likely to occur. Some decision strategies, such as RPD (recognition-primed decisions), may in fact be more resilent in stressful situations than analytic option comparison techniques. Such differential sensitivity of the cognitive processes begins to explain the variable patterns of stress effects reported through the following chapters. It seems that the NDM research techniques and theoretical models do offer a set of investigative tools for analysing these very practical problems in naturalistic settings.

Repertoires of decision strategies

A second theme which runs through this volume is an appreciation that even in natural high-pressure environments, different styles of decision making may be utilised by experts. The initial appeal of Klein's RPD model resulted in a degree of enthusiastic overapplication. He has taken pains to emphasise that NDM and RPD are not synonomous, and that analytic, option comparison decision strategies may also be employed by those functioning in stressful environments. While categorisation of decision styles for given domains has been very valuable, (eg. flightdecks and firegrounds), there still remains a problem of translating decision category labels across occupations and investigations. Analysis of underpinning cognitive and metacognitive functions offers one prospect of developing a common language to facilitate the transfer of knowledge across fields of study. Understanding gained of decision making under complex conditions can be translated to applications relating to situation awareness and action responses, two fundamental components of the models presented in this volume.

Methodological advances

A third theme which can be extracted is the range of methodologies that are being developed to study decision making under stress. An international meeting brings together psychologists working from very different traditions. Refinements of the ubiquitous Cognitive Task Analysis methods (Seamster & Redding, 1997) can be seen in a range of investigative techniques being employed, from mathematical modelling (Kuk), physiological measures (Crego), case study research (Lipshitz, Montgomery, Dowell), to head mounted video recordings (Omedi & Wearing). These devlopments are important but there still remains a need for more empirical work conducted with reasonable sample sizes and detailed reporting of methods, analysis and results. Despite the difficulties faced by those working in the commercial sector with regard to client confidentiality, the lack of peer reviewed journal publications in the NDM literature is a significant scientific weakness which needs to be addressed.

Identifying and defining NDM: A recurrent theme

As the opening position papers demonstrate, the NDM researchers are still experiencing something of an identity crisis, (as diagnosed by Howell, 1997), in their attempt to establish a place for NDM within general decision theory, while striving to demonstrate how it has something new to offer.

A recurrent (and possibly now declining) theme of this debate is whether their work represents a paradigm shift from traditional decision making or is their commonality simply a set of 'sharp-end' domains of study? Stephen Payne, one of the discusssants, pointed out that the novelty of NDM theory was more apparent than real, the choice of the label 'decision making' highlighting a contrast with traditional decision theory. If the label 'complex problem solving' had been applied instead, a pre-existing literature such as the research by Newell and Simon (1972), would be more readily identified as a theoretical antecedent thus diminishing the claim of a paradigm shift. Klein (this volume) disagreed, arguing that the mainstream problem solving research has limited application in the domains of study explored by the NDM researchers, and that their models have essential features distinct from previous formulations. If a true paradigm shift has not been unequivocally demonstrated, can some common ground for NDM research be identified?

Taking the group's core interest in experienced decision makers operating in demanding environments, it was perhaps useful to conceive of the NDM community as a 'guild' (Klein), although the risks of theoretical sectarianism were highlighted by extending this notion to regard the group as a 'cult' (Serfaty) or an 'exclusive country club' (Wearing), thus echoing some of Howell's (1997) earlier cautions about the negative connations of the guild analogy. (The Scottish location for the conference tempts the suggestion of an NDM clan until visions of clan chiefs followed by clan warfare emerge.) A similar debate in the opening session as to the essential defining features of NDM ended with a general agreement as to the task conditions (see Pruitt et al.) but criticism by several participants was that these boundary debates were fruitless exercises which had an inappropriate focus (see Rasmussen). If NDM is to progress beyond its initial 'novelty effect', there must be an understanding of how it relates to other aspects of human performance as well as an empirical means of testing various hypotheses which derive from the fundamental NDM assumptions. In fact, NDM is not new and it is not old. The contributors clearly show that NDM is rooted in established theories, applications and perspectives while offering fresh ideas, concepts and principles. The meeting represented a major step forward in this process: the building blocks begin to emerge from the chapters which follow.

In the course of three conferences and subsequently three books on NDM, the themes which are emerging have gained clarity but also moved on. The first book set out models and methods for NDM, whilst the second focused on developing the models and clarifying central tenets such as the role of situation awareness and expertise, and the rigour of the methods. This third book reflects again an advance in the thinking on NDM, concentrating on the moulding of theory and practice into an organised whole. A key theme is the search for a reciprocal balance between theory and application, where both look for support from each other.

Applications

This volume reflects the increasing breadth of domains to which NDM is being applied, showing itself to be richer in applications. It is no longer just the theory for describing decision making in the military, but is now being applied to the emergency services and aviation. Already, practitioners in other domains such as medicine, business and industry are looking to NDM as a fruitful approach, and this volume only represents a sample of applications relating especially to high stress situations.

There are many benefits to be gained by bringing theorists and practitioners into closer contact and working relationships. One of the principal criticisms by the practitioners attending the meeting was the difficulty they experience in extracting practical applications from the extant research. This appears to be less true of contracted projects where NDM researchers work with a particular problem in a given organisation but it apparently remains a hurdle for practitioners independently accessing the published literature. The inclusion of practical recommendations in scientific reports of NDM investigations would be a desirable hallmark of our commitment...