Judgment, Decision Making, Problem Solving, and Team Effectiveness

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering judgment, cognitive biases, problem-solving heuristics, team diversity, creativity metrics, motivation models, and communication structures.

Dual Process Theory

A cognitive model distinguishing between System 1, which operates automatically, intuitively, and fast, and System 2, which is deliberative, slow, logical, and computationally demanding.

Cognitive Misers

The principle that the human brain conserves metabolic energy because it is wired to run on approximately $20\,\text{watts}$, leading it to default to System 1 heuristics rather than engaging System 2.

Heuristic

A mental shortcut, algorithm, or rule of thumb used to make decisions or solve problems that is generally effective but prone to systematic errors.

Overconfidence Bias

The cognitive error where individuals overestimate the accuracy of their knowledge and form overly confident estimates about unfamiliar topics.

Availability Bias

The tendency to assess the probability or frequency of an event based on how readily concrete examples come to mind.

Representative Bias

The tendency to judge the likelihood of an outcome based on how closely it matches a stereotype or narrative, even when that outcome is statistically less probable.

Base-Rate Neglect

The error of ignoring the prior probability (base rate) of an event before receiving specific details, such as judging a quiet person more likely to be a librarian than a farmer despite farmers vastly outnumbering librarians.

Sunk Cost Fallacy

The inclination to continue an endeavor or maintain an investment based on resources already spent rather than evaluating future costs and payoffs.

Loss Aversion

The psychological phenomenon where losses cause greater emotional pain than equivalent gains provide pleasure, prompting individuals to persist with failing decisions to avoid acknowledging a loss.

Framing Effect

A cognitive bias in which different decisions or conclusions are reached from identical objective information depending on whether it is presented in terms of gains or losses.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The tendency to prioritize dispositional (personality) factors over situational factors when explaining the behavior of other people.

Actor-Observer Bias

The tendency to explain one's own actions through situational factors while explaining the identical behavior of others through dispositional traits.

Regression to the Mean

The statistical tendency for extreme outcomes to be followed by results closer to the average, indicating that changes in performance should not be overly credited to praise or punishment.

Pre-Mortem

A structured decision process in which a team imagines that a planned project has completely failed before execution begins in order to surface vulnerabilities and logic flaws.

Enigma of Reason

The theory formulated by Mercier and Sperber stating that reasoning evolved for social argument and justification rather than epistemic truth-seeking, making accuracy an incidental byproduct.

Problem Search

The exploratory process of identifying an unmet need or identifying a problem that is worth solving before taking action.

Solution Search

The process of discovering an answer or resolution to a previously defined or assigned problem.

Fitness Landscape

A spatial representation where each possible solution corresponds to a point and its value or efficacy corresponds to its altitude, with higher elevations marking superior solutions.

Shovel Landscape

A single-peak fitness landscape demonstrating that worker shoveling efficiency peaks at an optimal load of $21\,\text{lbs}$, whereas loads smaller or larger than $21\,\text{lbs}$ yield lower efficiency.

Local Optima

A position on a fitness landscape where all immediate neighboring alternatives possess lower values, preventing further improvement via incremental steps.

Basins of Attraction

The collection of initial starting locations on a fitness landscape that inevitably lead a problem solver to climb toward a specific local peak.

Intersection Property

The mathematical principle stating that a solution constitutes a local peak for a group only if it represents a local peak for every single member of that group.

Diversity Trumps Ability Result

The finding by Hong and Page showing that a randomly selected group of diverse, capable problem solvers will outperform a team formed exclusively of the highest-scoring individual performers on difficult problems.

Toolbox View

A perspective evaluating teams by the comprehensive set of varied heuristics and representations members bring, rather than relying on uniform individual performance scores.

Team of Me Test

The condition by Hong and Page stating that an individual test can only select an optimal team if it evaluates how a homogeneous group composed solely of that specific person type would perform.

Meritocracy Myth

The flawed assumption that assembling the highest-scoring individual performers guarantees the best team performance on complex, synergistic problems.

Raven's Progressive Matrices

A nonverbal test of abstract pattern-completion used to assess IQ, which fails to predict optimal team composition when cognitive diversity is required.

Inside View

A forecasting approach that generates predictions by analyzing only the unique details, plans, and specific circumstances of the current case.

Outside View

A forecasting method that ignores local project specifics and consults objective historical base rates of similar past cases.

Hedgehogs

Subject matter experts who view the world through a single, overarching idea and rigidly apply it across varied domains, often exhibiting overconfidence and poor predictive accuracy.

Foxes

Subject matter experts who draw upon multiple smaller perspectives, adjust their models based on new evidence, and consistently outperform rigid experts in predictive accuracy.

Brainwriting

A protocol step requiring participants to write down individual facts, logic, and assumptions privately before entering group discussions to avoid anchoring bias.

Diversity Prediction Theorem

The mathematical theorem expressing collective forecast error as $\text{Crowd Error} = \text{Average Error} - \text{Diversity}$, demonstrating that group error decreases as member diversity increases.

Thick Data

Rich, qualitative context about human behavior, emotions, and meanings that complements large numerical datasets (big data).

Graham Wallas's Four Stages of Creativity

The foundational model of creative thinking comprising Preparation (researching the problem), Incubation (unconscious processing), Illumination (the sudden insight), and Verification (testing the solution).

Recombination

A mode of innovation involving the remixing of existing components, tools, or heuristics into new combinations, or placing new things into old frameworks.

Reconceptualization

A creative process that reframes, abstracts, or transforms the conceptual space of a problem to perceive it in a completely different light.

Adjacent Possible

The array of potential innovations that lie exactly one step beyond current knowledge, expanding dynamically and path-dependently as new discoveries occur.

Primal Mark

The initial piece of content, idea, or mark made during creative development, which exerts a disproportionate anchoring influence over all subsequent ideas.

Alternative Uses Test (AUT)

A divergent thinking test requiring individuals to generate alternative uses for an everyday object, scored by fluency (count), categories, elaboration, and originality.

Shapley Value

A game-theoretic solution that calculates an individual's average marginal contribution across all potential team-joining orders, uniquely fulfilling full allocation, zero property, symmetry, and additivity.

Theory of Mind

The cognitive ability to attribute mental states to oneself and others and recognize that other people hold distinct desires, knowledge, and beliefs separate from objective reality.

Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET)

An assessment that measures the ability to identify complex mental or emotional states strictly from images of human eyes, though partially confounded by vocabulary and verbal intelligence.

Facial Emotion Recognition Test (FERT)

A test measuring an individual's ability to identify six core emotions displayed across full facial expressions.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

A theory-driven personality instrument based on Carl Jung's categories that assigns respondents to one of 16 distinct types using four dichotomous scales.

Bimodal Distribution

A probability distribution displaying two prominent peaks; a structure assumed by MBTI types that is absent in empirical personality data, which instead forms a unimodal bell curve.

OCEAN (Big Five)

An empirically derived personality framework that measures individuals along five continuous spectra: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.

Principal Components Analysis (PCA)

An unsupervised statistical technique that reduces high-dimensional data by identifying linear combinations of variables that summarize maximum variance without specifying an outcome variable.

Scree Plot

A visual plot graphing the variance accounted for by each successive principal component, used to locate the sharp 'elbow' cutoff point for factor retention.

Biplot

A two-dimensional chart displaying both individual data observations (as points) and measured variables (as directional vectors) projected on the first two principal components.

Culture as Coordination

A management perspective defining culture as a system of shared conventions and informal norms that allow group members to align actions smoothly without continual renegotiation.

Attraction-Selection-Attrition (ASA)

A framework stating that people are drawn to organizations that fit their personalities (attraction), organizations choose candidates matching their culture (selection), and non-fitting members exit (attrition).

Tight vs. Loose Cultures

A cultural classification contrasting societies with strict social norms and low tolerance for nonconformity (tight) against societies with permissive norms and high deviance tolerance (loose).

SMART Goals

A management guideline defining goals that are Specific, Measurable, Reasonable, Agreed-Upon, and Time-Bound to establish explicit operational expectations.

Goodhart's Law

The management adage stating that whenever a measure is turned into an explicit target, it ceases to serve as a reliable measure due to human gaming and metric manipulation.

Campbell's Law

The sociological principle stating that quantitative indicators subjected to high-stakes social decision-making inevitably become vulnerable to corruption and distort the processes they track.

Lucas Critique

An economic theorem showing that historical relationships fail to predict future outcomes following policy changes because individuals actively adapt their behavior to new rules.

Cobra Effect

A perverse incentive outcome where an offered reward inadvertently worsens the targeted problem, named after the British bounty that led people to breed cobras.

Herzberg's Hygiene Theory

A motivation theory distinguishing hygiene factors (extrinsic context such as pay and policies that prevent dissatisfaction) from motivators (intrinsic job features such as achievement and responsibility that create satisfaction).

Self-Determination Theory

A motivation framework proposing that intrinsic drive requires satisfying three fundamental psychological needs: Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness.

Crowding Out

The psychological effect where providing extrinsic rewards for an activity diminishes an individual's pre-existing intrinsic motivation to engage in it.

Vroom's Expectancy Theory

A cognitive motivation model stating that $\text{Motivation} = \text{Expectancy} \times \text{Instrumentality} \times \text{Valence}$, linking effort to performance, performance to rewards, and rewards to personal value.

Relative Pay

The perceived standing of an individual's compensation relative to peer earnings, which frequently exerts a greater influence on job satisfaction than absolute pay.

The Folly of Rewarding A While Hoping for B

A common organizational dysfunction where leadership promotes one behavior (such as teamwork or risk-taking) while the compensation and incentive systems reward an opposing behavior (such as individual metrics or error avoidance).

Foot-in-the-Door Technique

A persuasion strategy leveraging commitment and consistency by securing compliance with a minor initial request before presenting a larger desired request.

Social Proof

The tendency of individuals to resolve uncertainty about appropriate actions by looking at and replicating the behaviors of others.

Cognitive Diversity

Differences in how group members mentally represent, structure, interpret, and resolve problems, encompassing distinct knowledge frameworks, heuristics, and perspectives.

Rule of 72

A mathematical shortcut estimating the time required for a quantity to double under a constant growth rate, computed as $\text{Years to double} = \frac{72}{\text{annual growth rate \%}}$.

Psychological Safety

A shared belief among team members that the interpersonal environment is safe for taking risks, enabling members to admit errors, seek help, and offer dissent without retribution.

Radical Candor

A communication climate characterized by high personal care paired with high direct challenge, allowing for honest, constructive feedback without destructive hostility.

Hackman's Team Design Conditions

A team performance model demonstrating that group success is determined by enabling organizational structures (real teams, clear tasks, proper authority, resources, coaching) rather than individual member talent.

Shared Mental Models

An accurate, shared cognitive representation across team members concerning task requirements, member roles, operational procedures, and team coordination.

Team Reflexivity

The formal behavioral habit of a team to critically review its operational strategies, objectives, and working processes and adjust them to meet dynamic challenges.

Common Information Effect

The group bias wherein members spend substantial time reviewing shared facts known to all individuals while neglecting unshared, unique information held by single members.

Mutual Enhancement

The interpersonal dynamic underlying the common information effect where discussing shared knowledge generates mutual psychological affirmation and elevates perceived competence.

Hub-and-Ring Structure

A communication structure where employees cross-reference incoming directives with neighboring peers to adopt the majority consensus, providing redundancy that filters transmission errors.

List the cognitive biases

confirmation, anchoring, availability, overconfidence, representative, stereotype, base-rate, sunk cost, loss aversion, framing effect, fundamental attribution, actor observer