The military, the police and fire-fighters often have to make life-or-death decisions within a moment’s notice that not only affect their lives but the lives of others on their team or civilians. Surgeons and pilots have to regularly make decisions affecting the lives of those under their care. One wrong choice could threaten the lives of many. How do these people, working in such extremely high pressure situations make these decisions so quickly?
There is no great technique behind it and the process of decision making is one of the most primal parts of our consciousness. The Recognition-Primed Decision (RPD) Process explores this method of decision making. The RPD Process can be used to make better decisions in high-pressure situations.
About the RPD Process
The RPD Process was first identified by research psychologists Gary Klein, Roberta Calderwood, and Anne Clinton-Cirocco in the late 1980s. Klein then published the process in his 1999 book “Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions.” Klein is best-known for pioneering the field of naturalistic decision making – the study of how people make decisions in demanding and high-pressure situations.
In 1985, the researchers who were then studying decision making in the army realised that these expert decision-makers were not comparing lists of options. They were not even comparing two options. So they ended up revising the whole research project and came up with a model of how people actually make decisions. This description they called the recognition primed decision making model.
How it works
In a given situation, the decision maker picks up cues and indicators that let them recognise patterns. Based on these patterns and the decision they have to make, the person chooses a single course of action or an “action script” that they consider will achieve the outcome.
Klein and Co wondered how people could assess this single option if they were not comparing it to something else. What they found was that the decision maker would run the action script through a mental simulation.
The mental simulation was based on mental models that the decision maker had developed through experience. In other words, the decision maker has an idea how things work based on the knowledge that has been gained from experience. The decision maker compares the option against what is known to work.
If the decision maker considers the action script will achieve the outcome, they go ahead.
If they consider that it might not work because of a potential problem, they may try and alter the action script in some way. If mentally they don’t think it will work, they discard it completely, and choose a second action script.
This is then mentally rehearsed and so on until they find an action script that they think will work. This is then utilised. Note that in this recognition primed decision making model there is no comparison of alternatives.
Why experience counts
In case you ever wondered why experience matters so much when you are looking for a job, according to the RPD Process, as people become more adept in their chosen field through experience, their ability to recognise patterns is enhanced.
This gives them more options to choose from. This means that, more often than not, the first option they choose will work. Their rapid and effective movement through the recognition primed decision making model is what makes them experts.
Intuition versus rationale
What Klein and Co are suggesting in their recognition primed decision making model is the use of intuition as well as rational decision making models, but with intuition leading the way. Intuition is used to recognise situations and help to decide how to respond, and analysis is used to verify that our intuitions are appropriate to the situation.
Initially Klein suggested that 90% of important decisions were probably made this way, with more than 90% of routine decisions. Subsequent research has suggested that his initial ideas were actually biased in favour of rational decision making. So the research actually underestimated how often people use a recognition primed decision making process.
The process of the recognition primed decision making model is being used to replace the conventional army military decision making process (MDMP) in many units, because it works. Plans using the recognition primed decision making process are found to be bolder and better adapted to situational demands than the other plans.