Coherence and bidirectional reasoning in complex and risky decision-making tasks

Abstract

The facts matter, but the story matters more. (David R. Dow, author of The autobiography of an execution, as cited in Lithwick, 2010, p. 10)

The process of making sense of and making decisions in complex and risky task settings is illustrated via detailed examination of decision tasks given to professional external auditors making a going concern judgment and to non-experts serving as mock jurors. Consistent with coherence and constraint satisfaction theory, the assessments of the evidence do diverge and the correlations between the decision and the aspects, as well as those between the various aspects, become stronger as the decision-making process progresses. An examination of adjustments made to individual aspects illustrates how coherence is generated and highlights the role of relative aspect mutability. Neural network models are built of the various decisions and their outputs related to the decision-makers' stated confidence in their decisions. The findings shed further light on the workings of inference-based decision-making.

Keywords:

• inference-based decision-making
• coherence theory
• bidirectional reasoning

Notes

1. For Experiment 3, the original New York Times article describing a woman's disappearance in 1982, and speculations about her wealthy husband's involvement, was summarized in a three page document, from where 12 key aspects (X1–X12) were isolated. A full description of the aspects is available from the author upon request. In the missing person/murder case, 12 aspects are rated over three decision stages. In the PRE stage the participants read a short summary of the case and were asked how relevant twelve 12 were as evidence in determining whether the suspect should be charged in the disappearance or not. The LEANING and DECISION stages are virtually identical to those in Experiment 2. The ratings throughout this experiment were provided on a continuous scale ranging from Maximal support for the defendant's innocence to Maximal support for the defendant's guilt.