1. Naturalistic Decision Making

2. What is decision making? • Given some set of options, pick one. • How is it studied? • Give people sets of options, let them pick one. • How is the set of options constructed? • What leads to satisfaction with the choice? • Do people make good decisions? • What does this say about how people really make decisions?

3. Kinds of decisions • What kinds of decisions do we make?

4. Kinds of decisions • Buying a car • Buying food • Buying a home • What to do on a Saturday night • What to do for a living. • How are these decisions made?

5. How are decisions made? • Do naturalistic decisions look like decisions made in lab situations? • Novice decision makers choose from among a set of options • Novice decision makers compare options • Expert decision making is often different

6. Expert Decision Making • Decisions from memory • Do what you did last time • Recognition-primed decision making (Klein) • Studies of complex domains • Options considered one-at-a-time • Mental simulation is employed

7. Formation of consideration sets • How is the set of options selected? • In a store? • What store should one go to? • Generating a consideration set from memory • How does this differ for different kinds of decisions? • Buying a car • Buying a home • Buying a toaster • Buying a stick of gum

8. Goals and sets of options • For some kinds of decisions, the goal and the set of options evolve together • What are you going to do after college? • Options are often considered sequentially • Like recognition-primed decision making

9. What does this say about the lab? • How can we make the lab more like the real world? • Laboratory studies often look at “party games” • Participants are taken out of what they normally do • Questions are not perceived as being that natural • Should it be surprising that we sometimes see strange behavior in laboratory studies? • So, what can we do?