Vigilant and hypervigilant decision making.
Recent studies have argued that deficient decision making under stress is due to adoption of a hypervigilant style of decision making, which has been characterized as disorganized and inefficient. However, under the conditions that characterize many real-world or naturalistic tasks, a hypervigilant pattern of decision making may be adaptive, because the decision maker does not have the luxury of implementing a more elaborate analytic procedure. This study examined the effectiveness of vigilant and hypervigilant decision-making strategies on a naturalistic task. Results indicated that participants who used a hypervigilant decision-making strategy performed better than those who used a vigilant strategy. Implications for decision making in naturalistic environments are discussed.
Johnston
J H
JH
Naval Air Warfare Center Training Systems Division, Orlando, Florida 32826, USA. joan_johnston@ntsc.navy.mil
Driskell
J E
JE
Salas
E
E
D001143:Arousal; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008889:Military Personnel; D013315:Stress, Psychological