Reviewing linkages between display design and cognitive biases in decision making: an emergency response perspective

Decision making in nuclear emergency response involves significant uncertainty, time pressure, and high stakes. The stress and ambiguity can result in the use of heuristic decision making strategies, which may sometimes result in poor decision outcomes. As complex information systems are often used...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theoretical issues in ergonomics science 2024-11, Vol.25 (6), p.776-803
Main Authors: Minotra, Dev, Feigh, Karen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Automation
Bias
cognitive bias
Cognitive tasks
Confidence intervals
Decision making
Design
Displays
emergency management
Emergency preparedness
Emergency procedures
Emergency response
Guidelines
Information systems
Linkages
Literature reviews
Nuclear safety
Safety critical
Task complexity
Citations: Items that this one cites
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Summary:Decision making in nuclear emergency response involves significant uncertainty, time pressure, and high stakes. The stress and ambiguity can result in the use of heuristic decision making strategies, which may sometimes result in poor decision outcomes. As complex information systems are often used in emergency operations, this research aims at examining linkages between design choices in computer displays and cognitive biases. This paper reports a literature review covering a set of themes that include framing effects, facilitating balanced perspectives of information, automation transparency, and the role of meta-information in conveying significance. The review provides evidence from the literature showing the importance of display design in mitigating the emergence of cognitive biases in decision making tasks. The review resulted in 11 guidelines for the design of computer displays in safety-critical applications, and directions are provided for future research. A theme that connects many of these guidelines is that providing the big picture can mitigate many types of biases, which often should encompass self-reflection and calibration of appropriate confidence levels. It can be concluded that over time, the potential for biasing users can be interwoven within computer displays if debiasing is not taken into consideration early in the design process.
ISSN:1463-922X
1464-536X
DOI:10.1080/1463922X.2024.2337681