Krav Maga Boston | Articles On Decision Making When Threatened

Effective Decision Making Under Stress & Duress

Decision Making Models When Under Stress & Duress

A key personal safety, and self-protection skill is that of effective decision-making. The role that fast, decision-making had in combat was recognized by air-force, military strategist, Colonel John Boyd creator of the OODA Loop. He broke decision-making down into four steps: an individual (fighter-pilot) must first observe what was happening, then Orientate (filter the necessary and pertinent information from the unnecessary), make a decision, based on the relevant information, and then act upon it. The quicker a pilot could go through this process the more successful they would be in aerial combat. Equally, if a pilot could force the other combatant, they were dealing with to go through this loop i.e., force them to react and respond to their actions, rather than the other way round, they would be able to exploit the time it took them to move to the action stage of the loop. Whilst Boyd, described the sequence of events that takes a person to reach a decision, he didn’t go into the details of how people do this i.e., the “Orient” stage. That is, the different methods people use of filtering out irrelevant information, and the natural cognitive biases that people have when doing so.

By understanding how we reach decisions, and the obstacles that prevent us from reaching and making quick and accurate decisions, we can start to change our decision-making processes so that we become more effective when doing so. When we are looking at preventing ourselves from having a predatory individual victimize us, then it is vital that we can decide upon a course of action quickly as we have already found ourselves having to react and respond to the plan that they have already decided upon. As soon as we can force them to start having to respond to our actions etc., the greater are chances of being successful in the potential confrontation e.g., if we believe we are being followed, and can quickly decide upon an appropriate course of action, such as changing direction towards a busier location, or positioning ourselves behind an obstacle such as a parked car, or even turning to confront them etc., we are now forcing them to have to reach a decision about how they should now respond i.e., we have interrupted their plan. However, unfortunately we have natural biases that often prevent us from doing so, and it is only by recognizing them that we can stop ourselves being affected by them.

Often our default ways of reaching decisions are sub-optimal when working under stress and duress. We may like to think that everything will be alright on the night etc., but the truth is we are normally unable to reach effective decisions quickly, as we start to over question the effectiveness of each possible choice, and spend too much time comparing each potential solution against each other etc. In many cases we become so consumed in these processes that we fail to act at all. By learning how we naturally fail at reaching effective decisions when adrenalized and facing danger we can start to develop more effective ways of going through the “Orientate” phase of Boyd’s OODA Loop.

References

Bryant, D. J. (2006). Rethinking OODA: Toward a Modern Cognitive Framework of Command Decision Making. Military Psychology 18(3): 23-46.

Harrison, Y., & Horne, J. (2000). The Impact of Sleep Deprivation on Decision Making: A Review. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 6(3): 236-249.

Keinan, G. (1987). Decision Making Under Stress: Scanning of Alternatives Under Controllable and Uncontrollable Threats. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(3): 639-644.