Coping with Uncertainty: A Naturalistic Decision-Making Analysis

This paper is concerned with three questions: How do decision makers conceptualize uncertainty? How do decision makers cope with uncertainty? Are there systematic relationships between different conceptu- alizations of uncertainty and different methods of cop- ing? To answer these questions we analyzed 102 self- reports of decision-making under uncertainty with an inclusive method of classifying conceptualizations of uncertainty and coping mechanisms developed from the decision-making literature. The results showed that decision makers distinguished among three types of uncertainty: inadequate understanding, incomplete information, and undifferentiated alternatives. To these they applied five strategies of coping: reducing uncertainty, assumption-based reasoning, weighing pros and cons of competing alternatives, suppressing uncertainty, and forestalling. Inadequate understanding was primarily managed by reduction, incomplete information was primarily managed by assumption- based reasoning, and conflict among alternatives was primarily managed by weighing pros and cons. Based on these results and findings from previous studies of naturalistic decision-making we hypothesized a R.A.W.F.S. (Reduction, Assumption-based reasoning, Weighing pros and cons, Suppression, and Hedging) heuristic, which describes the strategies that decision makers apply to different types of uncertainty in naturalistic settings.