ABSTRACT

An important aspect of NDM methodology is an assumption of the need for researchers to study domain-expert decision makers. Concentrating on expert decision makers suggests two important issues in relation to good versus poor decisions. The first is that experts, by definition, will make mostly good (or at least adequate) decisions and few poor deci­ sions. This is not to suggest that expert decision makers never make mis­ takes. However, their errors are most likely to be of the kind categorized as "slips" by Norman (1998, pp. 105-110): capture errors, description er­ rors, data-driven errors, and so forth. Such errors are the result of funda­ mental characteristics of the human information-processing system. The second issue is that field investigations suggest that experts generally know when they are performing poorly: Their very expertise enables them to be aware of this (McLennan, Omodei, & Wearing, 2001). Accord­ ingly, we suggest that the most important characteristic of those pro­ cesses that underlie poor decision making by an expert is concurrent awareness of his or her poor performance.