3.Role of Intuition and Emotion

8/7/2019 3.Role of Intuition and Emotion

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Making Management Decisions:the Role of Intuition and Emotion

By Herbert A. Simon Camegie- M ellon U niversity

The work of a manager includes making decisions (of participating in their making), communicating themto others, and monitoring bow they are carried out.Managers must know a great deal about the industrial

and social environment in which they work and themaking process itself to make decisions well. Over thepast 40 years, the technique of decision makinghas been greatly advanced by thedevelopment of a wide range of tools -in particu1ar,the tools of operations research and managementscience, and the technology of expert systems. Butthese advances have not applied to the entire domainof decision making. They have bad their greatestimpact on decision making that is well-structured,deliberative and quantitative; they have had lessimpact on decision making that is loosely structured,intuitive, and qualitative; and they have bad the leastimpact on face to face interactions between amanager and his or her coworkers-the give and takeof everyday work. In this article, I will discuss thesetwo relatively types of decision making: "intuitive"decision-making and decision making that involvesinterpersonal. Interaction. What, if anything, do weknow about how judgmental and intuitive processeswork and how they can be made to work better?And why do managers often fail to do what theyknow they should do – even what they have decided todo? What can be done to bring action into closer accord with intention?

My artic1e will therefore have the form of a diptych, which one half devoted to each of thesetopics. First, I will discuss judgmenta1 and intuitivedecision-making; then I will turn to the subject of the manager 's behavior and the influence of emotions on that behavior. Sometimes the termrationa1 (or logical) is applied to decision making that is consciously analytic, the term nonrational to

decision making that is intuitive and the termirrational to decision making behavior that responds to the emotions or that deviates from action chosen"rational1y." We will be concerned, then, with thenonrational and the irrational components of managerial decision making and behavior Our task. you might say, is to discover the reason that underlies unreason.

lntuition and Judgment

As an appendix to the Functions of the Executive

(Harvard University Press. 1938), Chester L Barnardpublished an essay, based on a talk he bad given in1936 at Princeton, entitled "Mind in EverydayAffairs." The central motif of that essay was a contrastbetween what. Barnard called "logical" and "nonlogical"processes for making decisions. He speaks of "thewide divergence of opinion . . . as to what constitutes aproper intellectual basis for opinion or deliberate ac-tion." And he continues:

By "logical processes" I mea n consciousthinking which could be expressed in wordsor by other symbols, that is, reasoning. By"non-Logical processes" I mean those not ca-pable of being expressed in words or as rea-soning, which are only made known by ajudgment, decision or action.

Barnard's thesis was that executive. as contrasted. say, withscientists, do not often enjoy the luxury of making their decisions on the basis of orderly rational analysis, butdepend largely on intuitive or judgmental responses todecision-demanding situations. .

Although Barnard did not provide a set of forma!criteria for distinguishing between logical and judg-menta1 decision making, he did provide a phenomeno-logical characterization of the two styles that makethem easily recognizable. at least in their more extremeforms. In logical decision making, goals andalternatives are made explicit, the consequences of pursuing di1ferent alternatives are calculated, andthese consequences are evaluated in terms of howclose they are to the goals.

In judgmenta1 decision making, the response tothe need for a decision is usually rapid, too rapid toallow for an orderly sequential analysisof thesituation. and the decision-maker cannot usually give averidical account of either the process by whicl1 thedecision was reached or the grounds for judging itcorrect. Never

theless, decision makers may have great confidence inthe correctness of their" intuitive decisions and arelikely to attribute their ability to make them rapidly totheir experience.

Most executives probably find Barnard's accountof their decision processes persuasive; it captures their OWD feelings of how processes work. On the other band, some students of management, especially thosewhose goal is to improve management-decisionprocesses, have felt less comfortable with it. It appearsto vindicate map judgments and to cast doubt on therelevance of management-science tools, which almostall involve deliberation and calculation in decisionmaking.

Barnard did not regard the nonlogical processesof decision as magical in any sense. On the contrary,he felt they were grounded in knowledge andexperience:

The sources of these non-logical processes liein physiological conditions or factors, or inthe physical and social environment mostlyimpressed upon us unconsciously or without conscious effort on our part. They also consist of the mass of facts patterns concepts,techniques, abstractions, and generally what we call formal knowledge or beliefs, which

are impressed upon our minds more or less byconscious effort and study. This second sourceof non-logical mental processes greatlyincreases with directed experience, study and education (p. 302)

At the time I wrote Administrative Behavior' (1941-42), I was troubled by Barnard's account of intu-itive judgment (see the footnote on p. 51 of AB),largely, I think, because he left no clues as to what sub-conscious processes go on while judgments are beingmade. 2 I was wholly persuaded, however, that a theoryof decision making bad to give an account of both con-scious and subconscious processes (see the end of p. 75to the top of p. 76). I finessed the issue by assumingthat both the Conscious and the unconscious parts of the process were the same, that they involve drawing onfactual premises and value premises, and operating onthem to form conclusions that became the decisions.

Because I used logic (drawing conclusions frompremises) as a central metaphor to describe the deci-sion-making process, many readers of AdministrativeBehavior have concluded that the theory advancedthere applies only to "1ogical " decision making, not todecisions that involve intuition and judgment. That wascertainly not my intent. But now, after nearly 50 years,the ambiguity can be resolved because we haveacquired a solid understanding of what the judgmentaland intuitive processes are. I will take up the new evi-dence in a moment; but first, a word must be said aboutthe "two brains" hypothesis, which argues that

rational and intuitive processes are so different thatthey are carried out in different parts of the brain.

Split Brains and Forms of Thought

Physiological research on "split brains"-brai8 inwhich the corpus callosum, which connects thehemispheres of the cerebrum, bas been severed-provided encouragement to the idea of twoqualitatively different kinds of decision making-theanalytical, corresponding to Barnard's "logical,’ andthe intuitive or creative, corresponding to his "non-Iogical".The primary evidence behind this dichotomy is thatthe two hemispheres exhibit a division of labor: right-handed people, the right hemisphere plays a specialrole in the recognition of visual patters, and r lefthemisphere in analytical processes and the uselanguage. .

Other evidence in addition to the split-brain searchsuggests some measure of hemispheric specialization.Electrical activity in the intact brain can be measured byEEG techniques. Activity in a hemisphere is generallyassociated with partial or total suppression in the hemisphereof the alpha system, salient brain wave with a frequency of about ten vibrations per second. When a hemisphere isinactive, alpha rhythm in that hemisphere becomes strong.For most right-banded subjects, when the brain is engaged ina task involving recognition of visual pattern, the alpharhythm is relatively stronger in the left than in ~ righthemisphere; with more analytical tasks, the alphas’ rhythmis relatively stronger in the right hemisphere. (See Doctor and Hamilton, 1973, and Doctor, 1975. some experimentsand a review of the evidence. 2)

The more romantic versions of the split-brain doctrineextrapolate this "evidence into the two polar forms of thought labeled above as analytical and creative. As aneasy next step, evaluative nuances I creep into thediscussion. The opposite of "creative," after all, is"pedestrian." The analytical left hemisphere so this storygoes, carries on the humdrum, practical, everyday work of the brain, while the creative right sphere is responsible for those flights of imagination that produce great music, greatliterature, great science, and great management. The

evideDC2 this romantic extrapolation does not derive fromphysiological research. As I indicated above, tm: search basprovided evidence only for some mea specia1izationbetween the hemispheres. It does any way imply thateither hemisphere (especial right hemisphere) is capableof problem solving, decision making. , Or discoveryindependent of the other. The real evidence for twodifferent forms of thought is essentially that on whichBarnard relied: the observation that, in everyday affairs,men and women I make competent judgments or reachreasonable decisions rapidly-without evidence indicatingthat have engaged in systematic reasoning, and ' their being able to report the thought processes took them totheir conclusion.

There is also some evidence for the veryplausible hypothesis that some people,confronted with a particular problem, makemore use of intuitive processes in solving it,

while other people make relatively more use of analytical processes (Doctor, 1978).

For our proposes, it is the difference inbehavior, and not the difference in thehemispheres, that are important. Reference tothe two hemispheres is a red herring that canonly impede our understanding of. intuitive ,

non-logical thought. The important questionfor us are "What is intuition?" and "Howis it accomplished? Not, "In which cubiccentimeters of the brain tissue does it takeplace?"

New Evidenceon the Processes of Intuition

In the 50 years since Barnard talked about the mind ineveryday affairs, we have learned a great deal about

processes human beings use to solve problems, to makedecisions, and even to create works of art. and science.

Some of this new knowledge has been gained in thepsychological laboratory; some has been gainedthrough observation of the behavior of People who are

demonstrably creative in some realm of human endeavor;and a great deal has been gained though the use of the

modern digital computer to model human thoughtprocesses and perform problem-solving and decision-

making functions at expert levels. I should l like to examinethis body of research, Witch falls under the labels of "cognitive science" and “artificial intelligence”, to see

what light it casts on intuitive, judgmental decisionmaking in management. We will see that a rather detailed

account can be given of the processes that underliejudgment, even though most of these processes are notwithin the conscious awareness of the actor using them.

The Experts Intuition

In recent years, the disciplines of cognitive science andartificial intelligence have devoted a great deal of attentionto the nature of expert problem solving and decisionmaking in professional-level tasks.

The goal of the cognitive science research has been togain an understanding of the differences between thebehavior of experts and novices, and possibly to learnmore about how novices can become experts. The goal of artificial-intelligence research bas been to build computer systems that can perform professional tasks ascompetently as human experts can. Both lines of researchhave greatly deepened. our understanding of expertise.

lntuition in Chessplaying One much studied class of experts is the grandmasters in the

game of chess. Chess is usually believed to require a high level of intellect, and grandmasters are normally full-time professionalswho have devoted many years to acquiring their mastery of thegame. From a research standpoint, the advantage of the game is thatthe level of skill of players can be calibrated accurately from their official ratings, based on their tournament success.

From the standpoint of studying intuitive thinking, chessmight seem (at least to outsiders) an unpromising domain. Chess playing is thought toinvolve a highly analytical approach, with players working outsystematically the consequenCe5 of moves and countermoves, 50that a single move may take as much as a half hour`s thought, or more. On the other hand, chess professionals can play simultaneous

games, sometimes against as many as 50 opponents, and exhibitonly a moderately lower level of skill than in games playing under tournament conditions. In simultaneous play the professional takesmuch less than a minute, often only a few seconds, for each move.There is no time for careful analysis.

When we ask the grandmaster or master how he or she isable to find good moves under these circumstances, we get: thesame answer that we get from other professionals who arequestioned about rapid decisions:It is done by "intuition," by applying one's professional "judgment"to the situation. A few seconds' glance at the position suggests agood move, although the player bas no awareness of how thejudgment was evoked.

Even under tournament conditions, good moves usually cometo a player's mind after only a few seconds' consideration of theboard. The remainder of the analysis time is generally spent

verifying that a move appearing plausible does not have a hiddenweakness. We encounter this same kind of behavior in other professional domains where intuitive judgments are usubjected to testsof various kinds before they are actimplemented. The main exceptions are situations whedecision bas to be made before a deadline or almost instantly. Of course we know that under these circumstances (as in professionalchess when the allowed time is nearly exhausted), mistakes aresometimes made.

How do we account for the judgment or intuition that allowsthe chess grandmaster usually to find good moves in a few seconds?A good deal of the answer can be derived from an experiment thatis easily repeated. First, present a grandmaster and a novice with aposition from an actual, but unfamiliar chess game (with about 25pieces on the board). After five or ten seconds, remove the boardand pieces and ask the sub

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