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

  • intense time pressure & risk

  • prospective cognitive modelling

  • anticapatory thinking about the future

• about the problem environment

  • stem from the problem itself

Exogenous Features

• related to the effectiveness of the response the endogenous features

• about the operating system responding to the decision problem

• issues affiliated with the management problem and the associate team process

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

  • the decision making of individuals within tightly controlled research framework and examine basic cognitive processes

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; exploring the way people use their experience to make decisions

• 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)

• for the delivery of critical decision-making scenarios

• allows flexibility in decision-making as the environment changes within

• emulate naturalistic decision-making; replicate practical environments, offer repeated exposure and practice in dealing with critical incidents

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

• Cognitive - typically lead to accurate assessments, but can lead to systematic errors or biases

Representativeness Heuristic

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

• when we try to figure out whether an object belongs to a class

Availability Heuristic

tendency to base decisions on information readily available in memory

• estimating the likelihood of an event; people often use this of related information and memory as a cue to its actual probability

Anchor & Adjustment (Judgment) Heuristic

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

• a person uses a specific target number or value as a starting point (anchor) and then adjusts tha information until an acceptable view is retimed

Confirmation Bias

• select information that confirms a current belief

  • tendency to search predominantly for confirming evidence while failing to look or falsifying evdence; people focus disproportionately on evidence favouring their current position

• interpret information consistently with a current belief

  • people choose an interpretation that is consistent with their prior belief and fail to see that the information may be comptabile with other positions

  • tend to overestimate the robot of value of non diagnostic evidence

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

• to quickly identify familiar patterns and cues given situation based on their past experiences and expertise, they then use this recognition to generate a set of potential courses of action that may be effective at addressing the problem at hand

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

• Matching current situation to past ones

• Determines course of action

• pattern matching to match the current situation to once encountered in the past which identifies reasonable courses of action

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

using mental stimulation to imagine how courses of action might play out and see if it’s going to work

• relies on the ability to identify key patterns an cues in a situation quickly and make effective decisions based on that recognition

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; specific form of indecision in which the decision maker engages in redundant cognitive deliberation of choice fo no postive gain

• excessive information searches

• inability to decide upon a course of action

• uncertainty about the situation

• potential optins

• projected outcomes can actually hinder, stop, interfere with decision

Least-Worst Decisions

Decisions where every course of action could lead to negative consequences that are equal to another course of action

• equally adversive

• choosing between the least-worst is very difficult

• lack of good option

• places decision-maker in a challenging position

Command Teams

interdisciplinary and cross functional

• team members who have different backgrounds, different roles and levels of operational expertise

1. Preparing for critical incidents

requires chief officers to consider current managements structures, ensuring where possible that staff are trained effectively and the necessary resources are available

• training

• developing protocols and action plans

2. Managing Critical Incidents

how to identify critical incidents; processes to ensure incidents are notified to the most appropriate person and that they are managed effectively

• start with early identification & notification

• attention to victims (needs, family and community)

• media & communication strategy: based on openness and transparency

• monitoring of CI ensures that resources are used effectively and appropriately

3. Restoring public confidence

how confidence can be rebuilt through community engagement resolution or public inquiry

• community members may suffer psyc. or emotional trauma b/c of close proximity to event

• involves dealing with issues raised and being seen to deal with them

• must be able to learn from their mistakes

Decision Makers

rational and effective decision maker with decision making comprised of a comprehensive search of all available information and the appropriate inferences being derived from that search

1. proficient decision makers

relevant experience and knowledge to rely on their experiences

2. process orientation

does not making an attempt to predict which options will be implemented but tries to describe the cognitive processes of proficient decision makers

3. situation-action matching decisions rules

• matching isn’t a generic label; for decisions with the basic structure because it is appropriate for the situation, which means that any options are evaluated one at a time

• when presented with several options, no by comparing them against each other

• matching relies on pattern matchig

4. context-bound informal modelling

• Driven by experience and knowledge

• exert knowledge is dominant and contact specific and decision makers asense tive smeantive indicating that individuals work as well as the suyantiv contexct

• the structure of language

5. empirical-based prescription

actions are baed on experience; options that are optimal in some formal sense but when they cannot be implemented they are considered worthless

Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) - Field Studies

provide insight into the demand of the environment on decision-making, the affordances and constraints of those environments

• provides information regarding the potential sources of difficulty, error or non-optimal performance and how the larger system supports the decision maker

• structured or unstructured interviews, retrospective analysis, out loud protocols, videos of incidents

Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) - Simulations

• elicit similar behaviour

• realistic feautures can be built in (i.e., temporal parameters, distractions, workload)

• subjects’ behaviour can be analyzed as a function of relevant factors (i.e., levels of experience)

• Example: Minerva, Hydra, 10Kv

Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) - Laboratory Techniques

can be used to help further the understanding of decision-making after a level of understanding already exists in a particular domain

• generate a hypothesis around the types of decisions being made

10Kv (bolts)

method for running debriefins after simulations or after field studies

• electronic focus group; anonymous inpute from all those invovled in the simulations

• sit at a compute and shre thei ideas

• to be emotiannly honest

• provides ideas that they may have done differently

Anchor

how our final judgements depend upon some initial value rather than any kind of objective estimation

Anchoring Bias

when you focus on 1 piece of information when making a decision or solving a problem

Action Script

the decision maker chooses the first option and course of action that does not fall out when they evaluate the various options

• as people developing a game fain more expertise in their field; their ability to make these kinds of important decisions in the better option or least worst option improves

• are better able to recognize indicators and characteristics of a problem than people who are not

• can perform a more reliable mental simulations

• choose a more accurate course of action

Level 1: Simple Match

familiar situations can be matched with typical actions to facilitate rapid decisions resulting in well-known effects; a sense of tyicality that allows decision makers to quickly categorize situations and recognize how to react as an aspect

• simplest case where the situation is recognized

• the obvious reaction is implemented here

• the decision makers seize the situation and respond with the initial option that they’ve identified

• based on the idea that exna epericen decsion maerk can sualer fgenrarte a feasible course of action

• perceive the situation as typical cases where certain types of actions are typically appropriate and are usually successful

Level 2: Diagnose the Situation

an unfamiliar situation forces the decision into a diagnostic process in order to develop the set of expectancies required to select a course of action from their repertoire; expertise is need to construct the mental models needed to find one explanation more plausible than the next

• the decision maker consciously starts to evaluate the reaction, typically using imagery to uncover problems prior to carrying out

• often reply on a story

• building strategy to mentally simulate the events leading up to the observed features of the situation and try to find one explanation more plausible than another

• 2nd variation under uncertainty describes how the plausibility of alternative stories can decision maker choose in and categorize a situation and then the simple match method is then engaged

Level 3: Evaluate Course of Action

a satisfactory action may not exist to address even a familiar situation; defined as an ability to mentally stimulate or simulate a course of action in the situation and anticipate how it’s going to play out

• a mental stimulation process maybe required to develop an appropriate course of actions

• most complex case which allows the decision maker to evaluate a course of action without comparing it to others

• evaluation is conducted by mentally simulation the course of action see if it will work and to look if intended consequence that might be unacceptable

RPD Model: Observe

critical incident event

RPD Model: Orient

pattern match, situational understanding recognition

• is the situation perceived as typical, yes or no?

• Four components:

  • relevant (critical/important) cues

  • expectancies

  • plausible goals

  • typical actions

RPD Model: Orient - Expectancies

what to expect so that your actions can be smooth

RPD Model: Orient - Plausible Goals

once you’ve identified the situation it tells you what kind of goals you can pursue

RPD Model: Orient - Typical Actions

suggested as a set of actions that are likely to be successful

• pattern matching part and tends to happen right away

RPD Model: Decide

evaluation part; done by mentally simulating or imagining the action

• do one action at a time and play it out in your mind and if it works you use it and swing into actions

• if it almost works you can modify the action and try again

• if can’t modify to make it successful, all together and you try the next action in your list until you find on that is successful