The Human Decision-Making Process

Decision-Making is defined in Cambridge Dictionary as “The action or process of making important decisions” (Decision-making 2016) and a decision is often regarded as being based on a number of sub-decisions (Hoffman and Yates 2005). Decision skills are influ- enced by a number of cognitive processes, and when performed in complex environments human decisions are based on assumptions and intuition (Hoffman and Yates 2005; Klein,

Ross, et al. 2003).

Hoffman and Yates (2005) argue that the decision making process as defined in the common language is insufficient, as it often is simplified to a three step model of identi- fying, deciding, and executing on a certain thing. These decisions are rare and artificial, compared to the decisions encountered

Decision making is a subject to the cognitive sciences, the studies of how the brain works. To under- stand how to make industrial operators improve decisions, we need a basic understanding on the approaches humans take to make decisions outside of the laboratory.

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Chapter 2. Human Decision Making

Decisions are made every minute, but most are not consciously deliberated on over a period of time. The decisions made in this article is highly related to the individuality of operators, and their intrinsic motivation and autonomic decisions. The increased pro- ficiency of an operator can affect both operational efficiency but also satisfaction. 80% of industrial accidents are said to be caused by human errors, in some reports even more

(Rasmussen 1999; Salminen and Tallberg 1996). Accidents are often categorized into the

Skills, Rules, Knowledge model (Rasmussen 1983) by lack of skill, knowledge, or the use and understanding of cognitive rules, and the understanding of how mistakes often are par- tially caused by wrong decisions is an important focus point of the following exploration of Human DM.

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2.3 The dual-processing theory

A popular conception of cognition in decision making is represented by a dual-processing theory (eg: Evans and Stanovich 2013; Kahneman 2011; Kahneman and Frederick 2002;

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Chapter 2. Human Decision Making

Klein 2009). Kahneman (2011, pp28-30) describe the two as “automatic system” and “ef- fortful system”, but clarifies that we should not use the terms as more than nicknames for generalizations of a collection of processes in the brain. Kahneman’s reasoning for using the names System 1 and System 2 is to have a concrete subject that humans can fit stories and opinions to. These systems represent different approaches in the brain to thinking.

System 1 is fast, low effort, intuitive, optimistic and unaware. System 2 is largely charac- terized as a polar opposite, it is slow, analytical, critical and requires increased conscious effort. But System 2 is lazy, it resists work and works relatively slow. Because System

1 is quick, and always has an answer ready, but this answer is not necessarily the correct one, the relaxed monitoring state of System 2 is what makes us able to make