Judgments of Probability and Relative Importance in a Military Decision Scenario: The Influence of Subjective and Objective Variations in Causal Factors.

Abstract

For this report, researchers used hypothetical battle decision situations to study military officers' judgment of probability and relative importance. For the study, 222 correspondents and 72 resident students of the Command and General Staff College read a description of one or two military situations, assessed the probability of mission success, and judged the relative importance of several situational factors. Probability judgments were insensitive to variations in the important factor of enemy strength, yet in one problem they responded to irrelevant variations in the mood of the presentation of the situation. Relative importance judgments were, on the whole, global, that is, stable over situational changes. College students' judgments were similar to military officers' except that college students thought the missions had greater chance of success.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 1991
Accession Number
ADA239935

Entities

People

  • Robert M. Hamm

Organizations

  • U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Biomedical
  • C4I
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Accuracy
  • Artillery
  • Attack Helicopters
  • Cognition
  • Command And Control
  • Command And Control Systems
  • Fords
  • Helicopters
  • Judgment
  • Military Research
  • Psychology
  • Reasoning
  • Social Sciences
  • Students
  • Thinking
  • United States
  • Universities

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Military Leadership and Professional Education.
  • Regression Analysis.
  • Team-Based Human-Centered Cognitive Task Decision Making and Information Performance.