Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making

Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making 27
psychology” (Malle, 2004). Cohen et al. (1996, 1998, 2001) generalized this account. They found that when
experienced decision makers are directly responsible for actions (e.g., military commanders), they use a story telling
strategy that integrates situation assessment and mental simulation. According to the Recognition / Metacognition
theory, the story makes sense of observations by explaining those that have occurred and predicting new ones (e.g.,
disease C caused observed symptoms S1 and S2; if we test for another symptom of C, S3, we will find it as well)
and justifies actions by showing how they will succeed given those explanations (treatment A is appropriate for
disease C, and will be followed by observable patient recovery).
According to Pennington & Hastie, stories enable jurors to identify gaps in the explanatory structure – where
additional information is needed or, in its absence, where assumptions might have to be made (e.g, test for symptom
S3, or just assume it is there). The Recognition / Metacognition theory generalizes this aspect of story-telling as
well. Proficient decision makers identify and correct not only gaps in stories, but also conflicts (e.g., S3 is tested for
but not observed; A is applied but the patient does not recover) and unreliable assumptions (e.g., some patients do
not respond to treatment A even though they have condition C). They attempt to correct these problems by
information collection when it is feasible (e.g., testing first to see if a patient is the type for whom treatment A
works), or by adjusting assumptions when it is not (e.g., the doctor assumes A will work until she finds that it
doesn’t).
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Insert Figure 4 about here
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Figure 4 diagrams an example of the story-building strategy. It shows a temporal sequence of TDM cycles and
how the story changes within and between them. 12 In Figure 4, fictional Dr. House, M.D., matches a patient’s
12 The example is based on Rudolph’s (2003) experimental research with anesthesiologists. Rudolph studied errorcorrection
performance in a difficult medical scenario, in which initial diagnoses and treatment decisions were
invariably incorrect. She found a strong relationship between problem solving strategies and eventual clinical
success. One group, whom Rudolph describes as fixated, changed treatments after a failure but never changed
diagnoses – no matter how many attempts had been made to treat the same ailment (single loop learning only).
Another group utilized an approach she called vagabonding, in which they changed diagnoses after a single failed
treatment attempt (single loop and double loop learning at the same rate). In contrast, the most effective problem
solvers did not abandon a diagnosis after a single treatment failure. They explained away initial treatment failures as
idiosyncratic patient reactions or implementation error. They did change diagnoses after multiple failures – when the
accumulation of such assumptions had become less plausible. They combined rapid single-loop learning about