[ACT-R-users] Call for Papers: Modeling and Aiding Intuitions in Organizational Decision Making, special issue of the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, edited by J. Marewski & U. Hoffrage

Tue Nov 6 05:20:59 EST 2012

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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
<http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-applied-research-in-memory-and-
cognition/)> 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: 

(a)  How do intuitions guide managers, civil servants, politicians, and
other administrators, for instance, when making high-stake and low-stake
decisions? 

(b)  How can managers, civil servants, politicians, and other administrators
avoid falling prey to cognitive biases by training their intuitions?

(c)  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? 

(d)  How can heuristics be implemented as decision aids in organizations? 

(e)  How can simple heuristic principles contribute to the robustness of
organizations, institutions, or even society (cf. Taleb, 2010)?

(f)   Why are there comparatively few detailed computational models of the
cognitive processes associated with intuitive organizational decision
making?

(g)  How can cognitive architectures, connectionist models, and other
computational theories of cognition aid the study of intuitive
organizational decision making?

(h)  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? 

(i)    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? 

(j)    How do intuitive decision making processes differ depending on
whether they are studied in the wild or in the lab? 

(k)  How can the Brunswikian methodological imperative of representative
experimental design (e.g., Brunswik, 1955) be applied in the study of
intuitive organizational decision making?

(l)     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:  <mailto:julian.marewski at unil.ch>
julian.marewski at unil.ch,  <mailto:ulrich.hoffrage at unil.ch>
ulrich.hoffrage at 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
<http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/726151/authori
nstructions> 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.

Elsevier Inc.  525 B Street, Suite 1800, San Diego, CA 92101, USA

Tel +1 619 699 6400  |  Fax +1 619 699 6310  |  www.elsevier.com

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