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Strategic Forum, July, 2006 by Christopher J. Lamb, Irving Lachow

Other key criteria influencing how someone makes a given decision are circumstantial. (7) People generally rely on their intuition when:

* they are facing a time-urgent situation. In extreme situations, such as firefights and battlefield triage, even short delays caused by reasoning through a formal decisionmaking process can result in disastrous outcomes.

* conditions are dynamic or goals are ambiguous. If a situation is changing rapidly, then it makes sense to focus on a satisficing (that is, good enough) solution that can be found quickly. One can reevaluate the situation when it changes and identify a new solution if needed.

* they have a great deal of relevant experience. Because intuitive decisionmaking relies on a person's ability to match a given situation to previous situations one has seen, the more relevant experience one has, the more likely one is to use intuition and use it effectively.

* the problem can be modeled in mental simulations. Intuitive decisionmaking requires people to run mental simulations on what might happen if a given option were chosen. People can do this for a wide range of problems, some of which are fairly complex. For example, one study found that Navy commanders serving on Aegis cruisers use intuitive decisionmaking for 95 percent of their decisions. (8)

In contrast, people generally use a rational process when:

* they are not under heavy time pressure. Stepping through a rational decisionmaking process takes more time than simply following a flash of insight. With more time, people are more likely to follow the rational approach, if only to verify an initial gut feeling.

* conditions are relatively stable and goals are clear. If a situation is not changing rapidly relative to the time needed to make a decision, then a rational approach to find an optimal solution to the problem can be used.

* they do not have a great deal of relevant experience. If decisionmakers' experiences are not applicable to a given situation or insufficient to provide a basis for pattern matching, they should (and usually do) resort to a more rational model to guide them through problem formulation, option identification, analysis, and selection of a solution.

* the problem is computationally complex. Although human beings have a remarkable ability to use intuition in complex circumstances, at some point complexity overwhelms the ability to grasp a given situation. At that point, the quality of decisions erodes along with the ability to recognize situations or run mental simulations.

Despite different models and categories of decisionmaking, the reality is that decisionmaking style falls along a continuum. Pure reason and intuition are only antithetical at the far ends of the spectrum. In most cases, people make decisions with a combination of reason and nonrational mental shortcuts. For example, people often use intuition to bound the range of possible solutions for a problem that will be analyzed with a rational approach. Similarly, they frequently use formal steps from the rational model to augment or verify their initial intuitive judgments. (9)