FPSYC3400: Decision-Making & Critical Incident Management (Definitons)

Lecture 10

Critical Incident

high-risk, high-stakes, or uncertain events

Critical Incident: Canada

unplanned events such as hostage takings, barricaded persons, workplace violence, and other crisis situations

Critical Incident: UK

any incident where the effectiveness of the police response is likely to have a significant impact on the confidence of the victim, their family and/or the community

Endogenous Features

• situational-specific conditions

• about the problem environment

Exogenous Features

• related to the effectiveness of the response the endogenous features

• about the operating system responding to the decision problem

Critical Incident Management (CIM)

is intended to provide a response which satisfies the needs of the victim, their family and the community, but also provides an effective and proportionate outcome to an incident.

Traditional Decision Making (TDM)

• Classical decision theory

• Rational choice model of decision making

• Traditional approach to decision making

  • Sequence of steps that enhance the probability of attaining a desired outcome

Traditional approach to decision making

Sequence of steps that enhance the probability of attaining a desired outcome

Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM)

an approach to studying decisions made ‘in the field’/real-world situations

• Developed because applied psychologists weren’t happy with classical approaches to decision making

• A pragmatic research program that utilizes case studies to examine and analyze the decision-making of officers as they perform their responsibilities in

Hydra: Simulation-Based Training

used to conduct immersive, simulated scenarios for a wide variety of professions (e.g., police, military, emergency personnel, health care professionals)

Heuristics & Decision-Making

used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution via mental shortcuts to ease the cognitive load of making a decision

Representativeness Heuristic

tendency to assess the likelihood of an event occurring based on impressions about similar occurrences

Availability Heuristic

tendency to base decisions on information readily available in memory

Anchor & Adjustment (Judgment)

made by starting from an initial value (anchor) and then making adjustments from that pointC

Confirmation Bias

select information that confirms a current belief

• interpret information consistently with a current belief

Recognition-Primed Decision-Making (RPD)

Experienced decision-makers use a pattern recognition approach to identify familiar patterns and cues in a given situation

• Based on past experiences

• Requires learning and expertise

Recognition-Primed Decision-Making (RPD): Situation Assessment

• Matching current situation to past ones

• Determines course of action

Recognition-Primed Decision-Making (RPD): Evaluation using Mental Simulation

How courses of action might play out

Decision Avoidance

the passive avoidance of a decision that needs to be made

• maintaining the status quo

• deferring the choice to another agency

Decision Inertia

redundant deliberation for no positive gain

• excessive information searches

• inability to decide upon a course of action

Least-Worst Decisions

Decisions where every course of action could lead to negative consequences