Are Intelligence Agents More Irrational than College Students?

Jul 15, 2013 04:58 pm | rjm

I recently watched a segment on a television news program that discussed a new study that indicated that intelligence agents were more likely to make irrational decisions than were college students. As a retired intelligence officer who continues to train intelligence personnel on occasion, the segment piqued my interest. I wondered what specifically the author of the study was attempting to show. The yet unpublished study involved the participants, including 36 agents from some federal intelligence agency, in attempting to solve a hypothetical dilemma involving an outbreak of disease and casualties expected as a result of different courses of action taken in response to the dilemma. The dilemma was presented in two different ways. Both versions were fundamentally the same, but worded differently. It appears that the intelligence personnel in the study displayed significant differences in how they would deal with the two versions of the dilemma. In particular, they seemed more willing to take risks with human lives when the outcomes were framed as losing lives rather than as saving lives. The author of the study believes that the intelligence agents responses were an example of fuzzy-trace theory (FTT). FTT suggests that as people have increased experiences, they are more likely to make decisions based on experiential gists they have stored in their memory and less on a more literal analysis of the information as presented. While I find the ideas associated with FTT to be interesting and potentially valuable to those who want to make well informed decisions, I wonder whether the culture of the military and intelligence disciplines may have impacted the intelligence agents responses. What I mean by this is that military and intelligence personnel often believe one of their key objectives is saving lives or at least minimizing the loss of life in a given military operation. It seems that the military may take more risky options if there is a potential for minimizing loss of life. This culture may have had as much influence on this study as FTT.

Intelligent Communication Model: Below the Line Thinking Fuzzy-trace theory does present a challenge to many of our students who use interpersonal communication to collect information and make good decisions based on the information they have received. It appears that as professionals mature and gain more experience that challenge becomes even greater. The below the line thinking component of the Intelligent Communication approach to interpersonal communication may provide an answer. The analysis and integration steps of below the line thinking may particularly be helpful in overcoming the negative aspects of FTT. In the analysis step, Intelligent Communicators are encouraged to develop and consider competing hypotheses to explain the information received during communication. This may help them avoid automatically relying on heuristics and gists they quickly conger up from their stored memory in response to information. In addition, the integration step directs Intelligent Communicators to consider context, particularly the others context, in coming to a final hypothesis as to the meaning of information. The integration step should increase perspective and encourage additional critical thinking in lieu of automatically relying on data from memory. For anyone who would like to know more about the Intelligent Communication approach to interpersonal communication, we currently have a free eight lesson training course available in our on-demand training page. We will be adding a shorter one lesson overview of Intelligent Communication soon. In addition, keep an eye on our webinar hub, as we will be offering webinars on various Intelligent Communication topics each Wednesday, starting 24 July. We can all become more effective communicators, overcoming some of the problematic aspects of own our personal psychology if we remember to be swift to hear and slow to speak. rjm