Affect & Emotion

Emotion can interfere with decision making. However, affective responses can also prove very useful. Many times our first indication that there is a problem that requires attention is that “something doesn’t feel right.” Affect and emotion have been actively studied in psychology for more than a century. However, until recently the roles of affective processes in judgment and decision making were largely unexplored. Our research builds upon recent work in cognitive science, social psychology, and cognitive neuroscience to develop and test affect-based theories of judgment and decision making and to apply this understanding to problems in applied arenas.

Principal Investigators: Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll, William Burns, Joseph Arvai

Aviation Safety

Most aviation accidents and incidents are attributed to human errors. Understanding how pilots, air traffic controllers, and other aviation professionals make decisions is critical to improving aviation safety in the 21st century. Decision Research is actively involved in conducting research aimed at developing a deeper understanding of aeronautical decision making and in developing enhanced aviation training and decision-support tools. Research scientists at Decision Research have worked with aviation associations, airlines, and government agencies from several countries to develop improved procedures, training programs, decision aids, and risk-assessment tools.

Principal Investigators: Robert Mauro

Compassion

Domestically and internationally, millions of people struggle to survive in the face of poverty, disease, food insufficiency, natural disasters, and human malevolence. Those individuals and governments fortunate to have the ability and desire to help those in need are inundated with requests for vital aid. Many do respond, yet emotional responses to human crisis can be short-lived and are often blocked by the psychological numbing that accompanies reports of large numbers of people in need. Humanitarian aid provided by individuals, NGOs, and governments, though large in some sense, is but a fraction of what is needed and what could be provided. For those in a position to help, decisions are strongly motivated by perceived efficacy. Inefficacy, real or perceived, shrivels response, even among those who have the desire and the means to protect and improve lives. It is tragic, indeed, when efficacy goes unrecognized and vital aid that could be provided is withheld due to the illusion of ineffectiveness that we have named “pseudoinefficacy.” Our research seeks to explore and document the root psychological causes of factors such as numbing and pseudoinefficacy and to develop ways to mitigate their harmful consequences.

Researchers at Decision Research maintain an ancillary website that is dedicated to educating the public about psychological obstacles to compassion, arithmeticofcompassion.org.

Principal Investigators: Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll

Environmental Decisions

Environmental decisions frequently involve complex problems important to many stakeholders that are difficult to resolve. Unfortunately, many deliberations about environmental issues fall short of expectations. Frequently, consultations are not perceived as open and the scientific basis for decisions is questioned. Many lay and community participants may feel disenfranchised and believe that key elements are missing from recommended options. Structured decision processes may aid participants and decision makers define and articulate their objectives clearly (i.e., what matters in the context of this problem) and come up with good measures that will distinguish between the abilities of different options to satisfy specified objectives. Our research focuses on investigating the social, psychological, cultural, political, and geographic factors that drive public environmental perception and behavior and on developing methods to assist people and organizations in making environmental decisions that better reflect the facts and the stakeholders’ values.

Principal Investigators: Branden Johnson, Robin Gregory, Joseph Arvai

Genocide Prevention

Over the past century, good people repeatedly have ignored mass murder and genocide. Every episode of mass murder is unique and raises unique obstacles to intervention. But the repetitiveness of such atrocities, ignored by powerful people and nations, and by the general public, suggests a fundamental deficiency in our humanity — a deficiency that, once identified, might possibly be overcome. One fundamental mechanism that may play a role in many, if not all, episodes of mass-murder neglect involves the capacity to experience affect, the positive and negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgments, decisions, and actions. The statistics of mass murder, no matter how large the numbers, fail to convey the true meaning of such atrocities. The reported numbers of deaths represent dry statistics that fail to spark emotion or feeling and thus fail to motivate action. Recognizing that we cannot rely only upon our moral feelings to motivate proper action against genocide, we must look to moral argument and international law. The 1948 Genocide Convention was supposed to prevent genocide, but it has not been effective. In our research, we examine this failure in light of the psychological deficiencies described here and suggest designs for legal and institutional mechanisms that will enforce proper responses to genocide and other forms of mass murder.

In April 2015, Decision Research sponsored a two-day workshop on genocide prevention, featuring a keynote speech by Ambassador Princeton Lyman, and an open panel discussion titled “Preventing Mass Atrocities and Genocide: Strategies for the Future.” More publications and presentations, regarding our work on mass suffering, psychic numbing, and virtuous violence, are available at the website arithmeticofcompassion.org.

Principal Investigators: Paul Slovic, Robin Gregory

Health Economics

Healthcare providers must make decisions involving the efficiency, effectiveness, and value provided by different physical and behavioral treatments. In healthcare, there are many stakeholders with varying interests. However, each stakeholder has finite resources and must often make decisions based on incomplete evidence. Informal decision strategies like “doing what did we do last time,” or using “gut feelings” often yield sub-optimal outcomes. One way to produce better decisions is to first organize the important factors to facilitate consideration and to build a working model that reveals how all parts of the decision fit together. Our research focuses on developing methods that allow for a well-organized consideration of the relevant factors.

Principal Investigators: Nathan Dieckmann

Heuristics & Biases

Since the 1960s researchers at Decision Research have been conducting research designed to reveal the cognitive and affective mechanisms that are utilized in human decision making. People make decisions using a variety of different strategies. These strategies rely on different mental processes that may bias individuals’ decisions in different ways. Our research in this area is designed to determine what cognitive and affective mechanisms are utilized when different strategies are evoked, what biases the use of these mechanisms are likely to produce, and what techniques may be implemented to avoid the possible negative repercussions of these biases.

Principal Investigators: Paul Slovic, Daniel Västfjäll, Ola Svenson, Joseph Arvai

Risk Perception

Risk Perception, Communication, and Behavior

Decisions by individuals and groups about how to balance risk taking and risk avoidance regarding natural, technological, and social hazards depend in part on how people conceive of risks and benefits and how they learn of and talk about such hazards, both formally and informally. Understanding factors that contribute to risk perceptions and to protective versus risky behavior is critical to reaching appropriate decisions about hazard management. The way that risk information is displayed and otherwise communicated, now and in the past, can substantially affect perceived risks and decisions. Our research focuses on understanding the underlying psychology and social science of risk perception and behavioral intentions, and developing methods for displaying and communicating risks to help organizations and individuals better understand the risks they face.

Principal Investigators: Paul Slovic, Joseph Arvai

Risk Assessment

Individuals and organizations take many actions to reduce risk. However, not all risks can be avoided. To effectively manage risk, people must evaluate and compare risks associated with different threats. But it is frequently difficult to obtain reasonable assessments of these risks. Traditional approaches to risk assessment often produce unsatisfactory results when the probability of failure is low but the costs of failure are high. Informal approaches are unreliable and often contentious. Formal probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is expensive and difficult to apply and often produces results of uncertain validity. Our research is aimed at investigating the problems associated with risk assessment and developing techniques for overcoming them.

Principal Investigators: Paul Slovic, Joseph Arvai

Nuclear War

We have created weapons whose consequences, if they are used, are so far beyond human experience that we cannot comprehend them. This raises critical questions in need of further study: How can we rationally weigh the costs vs. the benefits of deciding to use these weapons if we don’t comprehend the costs? If rational decision making is questionable, what are the implications for key elements of nuclear weapons policy: deterrence, disarmament, and nonproliferation? Talks between the U.S. and North Korea are unlikely to lead to denuclearization. Russia is scaling up its weapons and missile defense programs and the U.S. is likely to do the same. Nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia appear to be seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Social media shortcuts diplomacy and careful decision analysis and spreads false information, adding to the decision-making problems. The threat of nuclear war is unlikely to diminish. Our psychological studies have implications for concrete steps that can be taken to reduce what are unacceptable risks to humanity.

Principal Investigators: Paul Slovic

Classroom Decision Skills

Teaching Decision Skills in the Classroom

Researchers: Robin Gregory, Lee Failing & Brooke Moore

We live in an age when children still in elementary school are being asked to make difficult choices, yet most young people receive little or no formal training in the required decision-making skills. We find this omission troubling, because students are less likely to be confident in expressing themselves, facing life’s daily problems, or contributing meaningfully to society if they lack the ability to make good choices. The skills themselves are not difficult, but unless they’re made explicit it’s easy to neglect key steps. With the support of administrators and teachers we have been exploring the possibilities for systemic changes in students’ individual and collective choice-making skills. Although our project remains in its early stages, we find that in classrooms where decision skills have been introduced, the response of both teachers and students is highly positive and students’ levels of discourse and sophistication in decision making have improved. Larger goals of the program include helping younger people to engage more actively in civil society and to overcome feelings of hopelessness that often characterize the relationship of youth to larger social issues, such as climate change, poverty, and immigration. Just think about how the world could change when these decision-smart kids grow up.

Principal Investigators: Robin Gregory

Terrorism

Terrorism can lead to social, political or economic consequences that go far beyond the direct harm they cause. When a mishap occurs, it has a number of direct and often immediate effects. For example, there are economic costs of responding to the disaster and there is an emotional response on the part of the public. However, these direct effects put into motion indirect effects that may first amplify public response and then dampen public reaction. For example, fear may heighten the perceived risk and in the short run avoidance of the impacted areas. This prompts more media coverage, which increases negative emotions. These heightened concerns translate into long-term economic consequences principally through decreases in the consumption of goods associated with the affected area, increased demands for higher wages to work in these areas, and higher expected rates of returns by business people to invest in the impacted region. However, if communities are prepared to respond to disasters they can decrease perceived risk directly by actually reducing the risk and indirectly through the use of risk communication that bolsters public confidence. This prompts the public to engage in risk-reducing activities (e.g. sheltering in place, taking antibiotics, evacuating certain disaster zones), which decreases perceived risk. Our research focuses on understanding the social amplification of risk from terrorism and devising methods for estimating the effects and combating them.

Principal Investigators: William Burns

Traffic

Millions of people travel on our roads daily and transportation is key to the development of modern society. The US and the European Union promote safe, efficient and environmentally friendly transport systems, which is closely related to speed as it affects fuel consumption, travel time and accident risks. We focus on understanding drivers’ risky decisions and behavior, such as speeding, driving too close to the vehicle in front, texting, and other distracting activities. An increased knowledge of why drivers engage in such behaviors is important in order to take measures against them and enables the design of effective interventions of risk communication. Another focus of research is driver decision making in cars with increasing use of information technology and automation that may improve safety considerably from a systems perspective. From a human factors perspective these technical advances also create situations demanding quick driver decisions and interventions.

Principal Investigators: Ola Svenson

TRIAD - Tool for Risk Identification, Assessment, & Display

A new computerized approach for conducting risk assessments developed at Decision Research with support from NASA. It is designed to provide a flexible approach to practical risk assessment with wide applications in government, industry, and business that avoids many of the pitfalls of the common informal approaches. Click here for more information.

Principal Investigators: Robert Mauro