Cognition in crisis: decision inertia and failures to take action in multi-agency emergency response command teams

Power, Nicola Cognition in crisis: decision inertia and failures to take action in multi-agency emergency response command teams. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

Text PowerNic_June2015_2028122.pdf - Unspecified Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (2MB)

Abstract

This thesis defines and extends the psychological concept of ‘decision inertia’: the redundant deliberation of choice for no positive gain. The concept was developed following observation in the real-world that emergency incidents were most often criticised, not because of poor decision making, but because actions simply failed. It is argued, therefore, that the need to develop a psychological understanding to explain the relationship between stimulus and non-response is of conceptual importance. Rather than avoid a choice, decision inertia is crucially associated with a strong desire to take action yet, for reasons that will be discussed in this thesis, action fundamentally fails. A Naturalistic Decision Making (NDM) approach was followed to investigate decision making in the real-world context of emergency response environments. A mixed methods approach was used to qualitatively interview command level decision makers and then explore decision making in an empirical simulation setting. Two key findings emerged from the data: (i) the relationship between uncertainty and decision inertia appeared to be mediated by the anticipation of negative consequences associated with both action and inaction; and (ii) the context of extreme environments can exacerbate these effects by making (usually adaptive) cognitive processing styles (i.e. approach goals; cognitive flexibility) inappropriate. Implications with regards to both the conceptual importance of decision inertia and more practical advice for decision making in extreme emergency contexts is provided.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	Date: 2015-06-15 (completed)
Subjects:	?? BF ??
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	14 Jan 2016 16:48
Last Modified:	17 Dec 2022 01:16
DOI:	10.17638/02028122
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/2028122