Call for Papers
Modeling and Aiding Intuitions in Organizational Decision Making
Special Issue of the
Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition
Guest editors:
Julian N. Marewski and Ulrich Hoffrage
The Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition (JARMAC) will publish a special issue on "Modeling and Aiding Intuitions in Organizational Decision Making", edited by Julian N. Marewski and Ulrich Hoffrage. Interested contributors are referred to a detailed outline of the intended contents below.
How do managers, civil servants, politicians, and other administrators make decisions? An avalanche of studies suggests that not only careful rational analyses, but also intuitions, gut feelings, and heuristics play an extremely important role in professional decision making-for the better or for the worse.
According to dual-process theories (e.g., Sloman, 1996), for instance, decision making stems from two cognitive systems; one which is rational, rule-based and one which is intuitive. Similarly, following the heuristics-and-biases program (e.g., Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky, 1982), decisions are prone to a set of biases and irrational fallacies that are often attributed to the intuitive system. The fast-and-frugal heuristics framework (e.g., Gigerenzer, Todd, & the ABC Research Group, 1999), in contrast, stresses also what might be conceived of as the positive side of intuitions: According to this framework, successful decision makers smartly choose from an adaptive toolbox of efficient rules of thumb, labeled fast-and-frugal heuristics. Intuitions reflect the workings of these heuristics.
The different, partially segregated, theoretical approaches not only offer contradictory conclusions about the role of intuitions in organizational decision making, but also differ in the methodologies they rely upon. Dual-process theories and the heuristics-and-biases program often invoke verbal, informal accounts of decision making whereas the fast-and-frugal heuristics and other frameworks strive to formulate computational, algorithmic models of the underlying cognitive processes. For example, cognitive architectures (e.g., Anderson, 2007) and connectionist theories (e.g., Rumelhart, McClelland, & the PDP Research Group, 1986), potentially allow understanding decision processes in terms of very detailed formal models. The approaches also differ in terms of the benchmarks they use to assess the success of heuristic, intuitive decision processes. The heuristics-and-biases program, for instance, typically invokes the laws of logic and models that come from the subjective expected utility maximization tradition as normative yardsticks for successful decision making and human rationality. The fast-and-frugal heuristics framework, in turn, aims at assessing how well decision processes are adapted to the statistical structure of the environment in which they operate-an ecological view of rationality that is rooted in Herbert Simon's work (e.g., 1956). Finally, the various approaches differ in terms of how much emphasis they place on actually examining professional decision making in the real-world-as opposed to in the lab- with the naturalistic decision making community (e.g., Klein, 2004), making the study of intuitions in the wild one of its methodological priorities.
This rich but partially segregated literature does not offer a consensus as to (i) how intuitive organizational decision making processes should be modeled and (ii) how organizational decision makers can be aided to make better decisions. Yet, especially the latter question is of great importance to practitioners-such as managers, politicians, or civil servants-who strive to improve decision making processes in institutions.
This special issue intends to contribute to establishing such a consensus, helping practitioners and theorists alike in their endeavor to both understand and aid intuitive organizational decision making. In line with this goal, the special issue will not only present cutting-edge research in this domain, but also offer a synopsis of the various theoretical and methodological approaches in one volume. To further foster exchanges among these approaches, authors of accepted papers will be invited to publish a commentary on the contributions of the other authors (in the same volume).
Submitted articles should make a new theoretical, methodological, or empirical contribution, for example, by presenting theoretical arguments, experimental or observational findings, simulation results, and mathematical analyses. Articles that are explicitly written for practitioners are also solicited.
Specific topics of full articles include but are by no means limited to:
How do intuitions guide managers, civil servants, politicians, and other administrators, for instance, when making high-stake and low-stake decisions?
How can managers, civil servants, politicians, and other administrators avoid falling prey to cognitive biases by training their intuitions?
How can heuristics and intuitions be systematically used to aid (rational) decision analysis, for instance, by guiding the construction of complex decision trees and by informing simulations of business scenarios?
How can heuristics be implemented as decision aids in organizations?
How can simple heuristic principles contribute to the robustness of organizations, institutions, or even society (cf. Taleb, 2010)?
Why are there comparatively few detailed computational models of the cognitive processes associated with intuitive organizational decision making?
How can cognitive architectures, connectionist models, and other computational theories of cognition aid the study of intuitive organizational decision making?
How can the rational analysis approach from the cognitive and decision sciences (e.g., Anderson, 1991; Oaksford & Chater, 1998) be useful for studying intuitive decision making in organizations?
When should correspondence criteria and when should coherence criteria (e.g., Hammond, 1996) come into play as normative yardsticks for assessing the success of intuitive decisions in organizations?
How do intuitive decision making processes differ depending on whether they are studied in the wild or in the lab?
How can the Brunswikian methodological imperative of representative experimental design (e.g., Brunswik, 1955) be applied in the study of intuitive organizational decision making?
How can the different theoretical and methodological approaches to intuitive organizational decision making be integrated into an overarching framework?
Interested contributors are requested to contact Julian Marewski and Ulrich Hoffrage (by e-mail: julian.marewski@unil.ch, ulrich.hoffrage@unil.ch; for more information about the guest editors, see www.modeling-adaptive-cognition.org) and to submit, as a preliminary step, a summary of the intended contribution (about 200 words). Each summary will be evaluated by the guest editors in terms of the intended contribution's scope and suitability for the special issue. Summaries that are submitted prior to December 31st will be given full consideration for the special issue; summaries that are submitted on a later date will also be considered; however, full consideration of late summaries will only be guaranteed as long as projected number of intended contributions does not exceed the available journal space. The deadline for submitting full papers is October 15th, 2013. Submitted papers will be reviewed within 4 weeks after their reception.
All submissions will be subject to the journal's regular peer review process under the direction of the guest editors and Ronald Fisher, the journal's editor-in-chief. The final version of accepted articles must adhere to the journal's author guidelines.
One goal of the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition is to reach not only scientists but also professionals and practitioners who seek to understand, apply, and benefit from research on memory and cognition. Editorial board members are J R. Belli, R. Bjork, N. Brewer, S. Charman, J. Dunlosky, R. Engle, B. Fischhoff, M. Garry, S. Gathercole, M. Goldsmith, P.A Granhag, A. Healy, P. Hertel, S. Kassin, G. Keren, J. Marewski, M. McDaniel, C. Meissner, J. Metcalfe, K Pezdek, D. Poole, H. Roediger III, B. Schwartz, N. Schwarz, D. Simon, B. Spellman, A. Vrij, G. Wells, C. Wickens, J. Wixted, and D. Wright. The journal is owned by the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, and published by Elsevier.
Cited references
Anderson, J. R. (1991). Is human cognition adaptive? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 14, 471–517.
Anderson, J. R. (2007). How can the human mind occur in the physical universe? New York: Oxford University Press.
Brunswik, E. (1955). Representative design and probabilistic theory in a functional psychology. Psychological Review, 62, 193–217.
Gigerenzer, G., Todd, P. M., & the ABC Research Group. (1999). Simple heuristics that make us smart. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hammond, K. R. (1996). Human judgment and social policy: Irreducible uncertainty, inevitable error, unavoidable injustice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Klein, G., (2004). The Power of Intuition: How to Use Your Gut Feelings to Make Better Decisions at Work. New York: Currency.
Oaksford, M., & Chater, N. (Eds.). (1998). Rational models of cognition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Rumelhart, D. E., McClelland, J.L., & the PDP Research Group (1986). Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. Volume 1: Foundations, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Simon, H. A. (1956). Rational choice and the structure of environments. Psychological Review, 63, 129-138.
Sloman S. A. (1996). The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 3-22.
Taleb, N. N. (2010). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable (second edition). New York: Random House.
========================================= Ulrich Hoffrage (Professor of Decision Theory and Risk) University of Lausanne Faculty of Business and Economics (Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales; HEC) Batiment Internef CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel: +41-21-692-3490 Fax: +41-21-692-3305 email: Ulrich.hoffrage@unil.ch =========================================