ABSTRACT
Two basic approaches have governed decision-making research to date; the study of individual decision-making processes in controlled environments and the study of individual and team decisions in naturalistic settings. Decision-making research in naturalistic settings (Klein, Calderwood, & McGregor, 1989) differs markedly from typical decision-making research, which most often focuses on a single decision among a fixed set of alternatives in a controlled environment. In naturalistic settings, decisions are embedded in a broader situational and cultural context and are part of a dynamic decision process. Therefore, decisions are affected by the dynamics of the situation rather than by a single judgment isolated from contextual constraints (Orasanu & Connoly, 1993). These two approaches complement one another—the first by providing insight into the making of decisions after a rational and reflective processes of reasoning, and the second by highlighting the importance of contextual constraints on individual or team decisions. In this chapter, we present two studies on decision-making expertise. These focus on the constraints that complex real-world settings impose on individual and group reasoning and decision making. Two naturalistic settings are investigated: two intensive care units in a hospital and an emergency telephone triage service responsible for 911 emergency calls.
