Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making

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Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making 50 Control. Aids should help users adapt to constraints of time and stakes. This includes reducing risks by increasing the robustness of courses of action (Forestalling), reducing the cost of delaying irreversible commitment (Buying time), and acting immediately on the current best solution when benefits of further risk reduction are outweighed by the costs of delay (the Suppress tactic). Transitions. Displays for different modes should support seamless transitions to other modes when appropriate. For example, displays for creating options and goals (matching) should relate transparently to displays for comparing options in terms of goals (when choice is appropriate), and both should relate transparently to displays for vetting courses of action before implementation and for monitoring goal achievement during implementation (reassessment). Uncertainty. Aids should focus on the appropriate intersection of decision mode and action uncertainty. Issues relevant to the decision mode should be highlighted as discussed under Focus, e.g., obstacles in determining rule fit in matching, option efficiency in choice, and course of action reliability in reassessment. Variations in levels of action uncertainty across problems and users should be accommodated, e.g., pattern recognition tactics should be reserved for the lowest levels of action uncertainty; weak methods and lengthy reasoning processes should be reserved for the highest levels of action uncertainty; strategies for adaptive deliberation should be supported for moderately difficult problems in familiar domains. Displays should seamlessly track uncertainty levels as they change in response to uncertainty handling tactics; for example, affording users the opportunity to evaluate and modify peripheral assumptions in cases of low action uncertainty, or more central ones if overall implausibility increases. The standard story, which identifies decision making with choice, encourages people to make retrospective sense of their actions to themselves and others as deliberate and optimal (March, 1979) – and conversely, to fault others’ decisions for not achieving the same perfection. This story is an ideal congealed into a cultural myth. It has also proven to be a trap for designers, who are still capable of being surprised by the low level of user acceptance even for well-engineered decision support, when it focuses exclusively on deliberative comparison of options. Trimodal Decision Making insists on the normative validity of three paths to commitment, describes different levels of affordance for those paths, and prescribes principles of decision aiding. It fleshes out and corrects the standard story and other overly narrow approaches to decision making, and, we hope, will be a useful source of implications and challenges for cognitive engineering practice and research in the future. REFERENCES
Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making 51 Alexander, E.R. (1979). The design of alternatives in organizational contexts: A pilot study. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 382-404. Alexander, L. & Moore, M., (2008). Deontological ethics. In E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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Three Roads to Commitment: A Trimodal Theory of Decision Making

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