Decision Making Under Uncertainty and Time Stress.

Tactical decision making occurs in environments characterized by high uncertainty, high-valued outcomes, and time stress. The critical relation of decision outcomes to uncertain events pushes decision makers to resolution of uncertainty. Time stress, however, works in the opposite direction, precluding ideal planning efforts. It is thus crucial to systematically characterize the impacts of uncertainty and time stress on tactical decision making to facilitate the design of decision aids that will be effective in the environments described. The present study employs a theoretical framework that extends Kahneman and Tversky's prospect theory (1979) to goal-directed decisions such as those involved in battlefield tactical decisions. The framework is used to provide a basis for characterizing the critical issues involved in such environments and to design decisions aiding concepts based on studies employing the framework. Four studies were conducts. The first study provided participants with choices involving gains and losses in goal-directed tactical and nontactical situations. The purpose was to examine preferences among risky options and to validate the extended theory as an appropriate characterization of the tactical decision making process. The results strongly confirmed the theoretical formulation. The second study involved a more rigorous test of the framework using a more realistic tactical problem that provided both for a test of the framework and development of concepts for aiding decisions under time stressed conditions. Tradeoffs between effort allocated to uncertainty reduction and option generation were examined in detail, and aid concepts were elicited. Study two results were used to design aiding concepts that were further refined and tested in study three to yield a final set of aiding concepts to be tested in study four.