How do managers, politicians and judges make decisions? What are the consequences for the law and for the design of organisations? Are there specific decision-making techniques that can be learned from professional decision-makers? These and other questions like them are investigated in the research group Intuitive Experts, as a collaborative effort of psychologists, lawyers, and economists.

Recent findings in decision research indicate that under certain circumstances individuals are able to make high quality decisions even in highly complex decision tasks and under time pressure (Glöckner & Betsch, 2008, JEP:LMC; Glöckner & Betsch, 2008, OBHDP; Glöckner & Herbold, in press, JBDM). The degree of complexity and the short decision times point to the fact that these decisions are not based on deliberate mathematic calculations. The usage of intuition seems to be a better explanation. But what is intuition? Which cognitive processes does intuition rely on? And under which conditions does intuition lead to good decisions?

Glöckner and Betsch (2008, JDM) propose a parallel constraint satisfaction network model that allows us to exactly simulate intuitive processes and to predict the resulting decisions. Two core proposition of the model are a) that humans are able to efficiently combine intuitive and deliberate cognitive processes to make good decisions, and b) that intuition relies on information structuring processes similar to those used in perception.

Decision experts have learned to make efficient use of these processes (Herbig & Glöckner, 2008, PrePrint). An initial analysis of aspects of German law indicates that parts of the law are already designed to institutionally support these processes (e.g., latitude of judgment; cp. Glöckner, 2007).

The group aims to contribute to psychological scientific advancement by improving our understanding of the interaction between deliberate and intuitive processes in decision-making and by identifying and teaching efficient decision-making strategies (among other things). Furthermore, from the perspective of the legal sciences, the group aims to assess and (if necessary) to suggest ways of optimizing the legal system, taking into account theses results and conducting direct empirical tests concerning legal issues. 

Selected Recent Projects (updated 11/2009)

a) Book “Foundations for Tracing Intuition” by Andreas Glöckner & Cilia Witteman (Eds.) (upcoming February, 2010 – preorder at Amazon)
This book provides theoretical foundations for tracing intuition and gives an overview over recent methods to measure intuition including questionnaires, classic behavioral methods but also more complex measures such as eye-tracking and physiological measures.

b) We recently developed an extended statistical method to test process models for intuition based on Maximum-Likelihood estimation (Glöckner, 2009, JDM). The syntax-code for STATA users is also available at the previous link. An implementation in R can be requested from Marc Jekel, University Bonn. 

c) Tools for decision research can also be used to provide insights into specific decision deficits by clinical patients. We recently investigated the decision behavior of patients with schizophrenia (Glöckner & Moritz, in press, JDM).

d) Eye-tracking has been proven to be a extremely useful method to investigate automatic-intuitive processes in decision making.  We have shown that instruction-induced decision modes are not as different as usually assumed (Horstmann, Ahlgrimm, & Glöckner, 2009, JDM).

e) Voluntary contribution to a public goods can be increased by a leader that appears to make a sacrifice with his or her contribution (Glöckner, Irlenbusch, Kube, Nicklisch, & Norman, in press, Economic Inquiry).

f) To solve complex cases jurors have at least partially to rely on their intuition. We have investigated the positive aspects but also the downside of using intuitive-automatic processes and try to answer the question: can we trust intuitive jurors? (Glöckner & Engel, 2008, PrePrint).

g) German legal system does not rely on jurors. Lay jurors (“Schöffen”) play an important role instead. We are currently conducting a study to investigate the decision behavior of Lay jurors in Germany.  Some background information have been published in German (Deutsche Publikationen zu rechtlichen Entscheidungen: Glöckner, 2008).
[ Deutsch: Informationen zur Schöffenerhebung: Wir führen aktuell eine umfangreiche Studie zum Entscheidungsverhalten von Schöffen durch. Die Studie wurde ausgeweitet und umfasst inzwischen auch eine Erhebung in Bayern und Niedersachsen. Aus methodischen Gründen können die bisherigen Ergebnisse deshalb momentan noch nicht veröffentlicht werden. Wir bitten um Verständnis und bedanken uns bei allen Schöffen die bisher an der Studie teilgenommen haben.  Weitere Informationen werden an dieser Stelle veröffentlicht im Februar 2010.]         

Most recent and upcoming papers are available for free at SSRN.

Max-Planck research groups are a special kind of research body of the Max Planck Society, which allow young researchers to independently investigate important research questions in a team. The group Intuitive Experts is managed by Andreas Glöckner.