How I became a naturalist researcher

For some reason, I began to do naturalistic research. decision making Without appreciating what I was obsessed with myself.

Naturalistic research means exploring the phenomenon you want to understand where it occurs. If you want to know how people make tough decisions, find ways to see them, interview them, and check their accounts afterwards. Rather than passively adhere to the methodology, it focuses energy on the phenomenon. When I write this, I realize that it seems pretty obvious.

However, it is not clear to all experimenters working in a controlled laboratory environment that they present artificial tasks to naive university students. That was my background. When I came out of graduate school, that’s how I was trained.

Then in 1985 I got a contract from the Army Research Institute to study decision making. The military wanted to know how people could make challenging decisions under time pressure and uncertainty. I think most of the proposals submitted are to conduct laboratory-based experiments so that time pressures and uncertainties change. But my colleagues and I were different. We really wanted to know how this could be possible. We knew that the ideal way to make decisions would be to lay out the options in a standard set set of evaluations and obtain each one. We could not imagine how soldiers could carry out such movements in the heat of combat. What were they doing instead? We had some ideas, but we were really interested, so our suggestion was to study people who actually make life and death decisions under time pressure and uncertainty. We chose to study firefighters. And we won the contract.

Immediately I had to face the reality that I wasn’t ready to observe or interview skilled decision makers. So we added a communications specialist to our team, Anne Clinton Scirocco. She was not a psychologist, but she had the gifts to connect with people and encourage them to tell their stories.

They then tell us great stories, blow away our preconceived notions, develop a perceived primed decision (RPD) model (Klein, Calderwood, and Clinton-Cirocco, 1986; Klein, 1998) and explain how people actually make decisions in their work and life. The RPD model has been replicated many times and is still strong nearly 40 years later, but that’s another story.

I was excited by the RPD model and submitted my paper to one of the most prestigious organizations, the Judgment and Decision-making Society, for the next meeting, but was rejected. It’s very unfortunate. As the meeting approached, I looked at the program and realized there was a session on “naturalistic decision making.” That’s the session where my paper was supposed to be written. I attended a meeting in New Orleans to sit in this session (I think it was 1988 or 1989).

The meeting rooms were packed. There were three papers in the session. One was by economists who reviewed several datasets to infer decision-making strategies. That makes sense. The second paper was about medical decision making. The researchers had interviewed seven doctors. Yes, this seemed directly related to me. Until the researchers explain the task – “Illness 1 has symptoms A, B, and C. Illness 2 has symptoms B, C, and D. No specific diseases or symptoms are mentioned. After explaining his paradigm, the researchers told the audience that each of the seven doctors had the same reaction. They said this was not a drug. It was a statistic. Each of them came out of the cubicle. So the audience in the meeting room exploded. LOLand so did I, but I found myself laughing at doctors because the audience was so crowded, while I laughed at researchers because they were so crowded.

The third paper was by one of the most well-known figures on the Field, and was more relevant to me. It was about the Wildland fire service. However, the researcher had not studied actual firefighters. He studied college. His task centered around a map grid (not even a topology map) with “fire” that spreads from a cell of a particular probability to the next cell. Two of my colleagues had just returned from Idaho and had an observation and interview during the actual bushfire. This academic exercise had nothing to do with actual phenomena.

If this is a judgment and decision-making society that has considered naturalistic decision-making, I have seen little reason to attend their meetings any more. However, this experience sharpened my appreciation for naturalistic research and its importance.

Another experience furthered my view on naturalistic research. We heard discussions with a naturalistic researcher, his late wife Helen Klein, and a colleague of an organizational psychologist who was in the middle of a research project. Penny (not her real name) was investigating how people responded to HR decisions. During this casual conversation, Penny told Helen that almost half of the people she interviewed had yelled. Helen asked, “Why did they cry?” Penny replied that she didn’t know. This study was conducted midway through. Helen suggested that they investigate any more participants who might cry to learn that Penny is in pain. “We can’t do that,” Penny replied. “It’s not in the protocol,” Helen politely suggested that Penny ask after completing all of the interview questions. However, Penny is not persuaded. By asking that question, she was not part of the original protocol and not asking previous participants.

Simple curiosity wasn’t enough for Penny. Strict compliance with the protocols came first. It illustrates the difference between a naturalistic approach to learning and discovery and a methodological restraint jacket that eliminates curiosity.

It took a naturalistic approach. Because it is the best way to study decision-making in a context, and such cases only deepened my gratitude. Naturalistic research.