Choice and Fate
A new view of decision making and judgment arose because [Naturalistic Decision Making] researchers were describing what they were seeing in stressful field conditions as professionals, including experts, applied their judgment. Early NDM research discovered that expert professional judgment was largely based on a process in which experts expend effort on situation assessment (figuring out the nature of the problem), then evaluate single options through mental simulation, and then arrive at a satisfactory answer or action. Qualitative analysis of professional judgment under stress in field conditions was a major departure from traditional research in decision making. Mainstream models of decision making at that time were not much help in understanding these new findings. Specifically, utility theory mandates a procedure for “good” judgment in which the decision maker lays out all of the alternative decision paths and iteratively evaluates each for costs and benefits. The successful professional judgment being observed in the field was radically different from the prescriptive processes of “good” decision making found in the literature at the time. To put NDM in perspective, Cohen ( 1993 ) provided a discussion of three basic paradigms of decision-making research: the formal-empiricist paradigm (also known as classic decision making), the rationalist paradigm, and the naturalistic paradigm.
The formal-empiricist paradigm lasted until the late 1960s. Its essential characteristic was that it was a normative (prescriptive) model of rational behavior. The decision maker chooses among concurrently available alternatives; there is an input -output orientation, a comprehensive information search , and a formal development of an abstract, context-free model amenable to quantitative testing (Lipshitz, 2001 ). The formal-empiricist paradigm focused on behavioral testing of formal models, not on understanding cognitive processes. The rationalist paradigm overtook the classic decision making paradigm, but retained the essential characteristics in terms of normative (prescriptive) models as the standard for evaluating decision quality. The rationalist paradigm emphasized the concept of errors due to bias in unaided decision making. The rationalist paradigm also asserted that discrepancies in performance are the fault of the decision maker, not the model. Earlier efforts in classic decision making had sought to modify the model when discrepancies were found (Cohen, 1993 ). What was the motivation for the change in the paradigm? According to Kahneman and Tversky ( 1982a ), the goal of the rationalist paradigm was to make the research more cognitive, that is, to expose intellectual limitations, reveal psychological processes, and map the use of intuition.
Lipshitz, Klein , Orasanu, and Salas ( 2001 ) asserted that the naturalistic or NDM paradigm places the expert at the center of the research focus. “Comprehensive choice was replaced by matching, input-output orientation was replaced by process orientation, and context-free formal modeling was replaced by context-bound informal modeling . . . researchers within the NDM framework embarked on the construction of descriptive models of proficient decision makers in natural contexts without relying on normative choice models as starting points” (Lipshitz, 2001 , p. 333).
(2006–06–26). The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance (Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology) (Kindle Locations 14031–14057). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
