Behavioral science research; The decision process

The following program is produced by the University of Michigan broadcasting service under a grant in aid from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National Association of educational broadcasters. The decision process a program from the series human behavior social and medical research produced by the University of Michigan Broadcasting Service. These programs have been developed from interviews with men and women who have the too often on glamorous job of basic research. Research in medicine the physical sciences social sciences and the behavioral sciences. Occasionally you will hear what may seem like strange or unfamiliar sav these are the sounds of the participants office laboratory or clinic where the interviews were first recorded. The people you will hear today are Dean Patrick souping of Stanford University Donald Davidson professor of philosophy also of Stanford University and R. Duncan Luce professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.

And my name is Glenn Philips. We have or will here in the course of this series. Many of the complex questions discussed which are confronting our society these questions confronting us will demand solutions of the highest order involving decisions that the human mind has perhaps never before been faced with what happens only the coming years will show. Behavioral scientists along with others are studying this phenomenon. Typical of research work these offered by today's participant. First Professor R. Duncan described his research well for the last two two and a half years. I've been concerned with problems of individuals making choices from well-defined sets of alternatives ranging from learning situation to

what are known as psycho physical situations where the question is the judgement of whether one. Stimulus is louder than another or larger than the other two questions involving gambling but here the whole whole range of situations where people are presented with a very well-defined set of alternatives and for which they have some preferences as to what what the outcome is going to be and must make a. Choice out of these. The work has been in part theoretical and part experimental tests to test the theoretical notions by theoretical I mean mathematical theories. The next man is a philosopher Dr. Donald Davidson from Stanford University.

Well I think the first thing that I better tell you is that my main interest in Decision theory in the decision process springs from my interests as a philosopher and rational behavior. The question not especially how do people behave but the question how they ought to behave. These two questions the descriptive question and the normative question the question of how people ought to behave are obviously close to related to one another. And I'd be glad to talk about that to you if you want to quiz me along those lines. I think the thing I wanted to begin with was that I'm not a sociologist or anthropologist or psychologist but

primarily a philosopher. And my interest in Decision theory comes from my interest in ethics. Also a philosopher but with another keen interest in decision process. Is Dean Patrick of Stanford. Here he discusses his research interests. The main focus of my present studies is the application of the general theory of individual behavior to particular kinds of decision processes. The theory of individual behavior with which I am most concerned goes under several names. One is mathematical learning theory. Another is a stochastic models for learning. Still another is statistical learning theory.

However you choose to name this theory the most important thing about it is its newness. Essentially the first paper which might be considered a direct contribution is Bill Estes 1950 paper towards a statistical theory of learning. Shortly thereafter there were important papers by Bob Bush and Fred Mosteller. Bush is now chairman of the Department of Psychology at Pennsylvania and Mosteller is chairman of the Department of Statistics at Harvard University. My own interest in the subject that is the subject of approaching decision processes from the viewpoint of learning theory or individual behavior theory began in 1055 when I was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the behavioral sciences. Bill Estes who is

permanently a member of the Department of Psychology at Indiana University was also at the center that year. I remember the exciting time we had in the fall. A stab wishing a real basis for communication. And the two years preceding the fall of 55 I had worked in collaboration with Donald Davidson of the department philosophy at Stanford and the late JCC McKinsey on the theory of decision processes in the framework of a statistical decision theory and classical economic theory. In that work during 1953 in 1954 we were particularly concerned to establish methods for

measuring subjective probability and for amazing utility or value. By the time I had come to the center in the fall of 1955 certain aspects of the statistical decision theory or classical economic theory of behavior had become increasingly unsatisfying to me. I would like to say as exactly as I can what it is about those theories that I found unsatisfying. For one thing they are static theories in the following sense. They do not give or provide an adequate account of the mechanisms of change

in behavior and choice in decision on the part of organisms put into decision making situations. Secondly they do not provide an account of how a person comes to have the values or beliefs but she does have the viewpoint of classical economics or even of statistical decision theory is to take as data. The particular beliefs or attitudes or values of a person and then to study how he should act or make decisions so as to optimize. The consequences to him of his actions in terms of these given beliefs and values from a psychological standpoint there is much that is dissatisfying about this view.

The behavioral therapist wants to know why it is that people have the particular values or the particular beliefs that they do have. He wants to provide a theory as to how they acquire these values or beliefs. The way to test the adequacy of a theory concerning the why and how of the acquisition of values and beliefs. Is to perform experiments in which environmental conditions can be controlled and on the basis of manipulation of this control. Accurate predictions can be made about the responses or decisions made by the subjects mentioned application. Professor loos answer the question. How will research findings on the decision process

fit into everyday behavior. This is a terribly difficult thing to answer in a sense. I think part of the difficulty in answering it is that we. Tend to expect more of a psychological theory than one ever would expect of a physical theory. We talk about our every day affairs and in some sense accounting for what we do and I think probably in a very very long run we will in some measure be able to understand these every day occurrence is through work on a rather minute and specific problems. But. You have to you have to keep in mind for instance that in applied physics. The the use of the physics is

not to account for the detailed ongoing behavior of some piece of equipment or device that's been made known for instance and makes any attempt to describe in detail how an automobile or an airplane clock has what what the physics is used for is his to. To understand certain principles of flight or of the motion of an automobile to test certain critical situations that the apparatus might be placed in but that the detailed behavior of the device is never worked out by the scientists. It in principle presumably can be in practice much much too complicated to do and I think the same thing is these is bound to be the case in psychology that you. Your theoretical developments will give you certain

principles that go into the everyday behavior. But the compounding of these principles will prove to be so complicated that detailed predictions on the whole are going to be impossible about. What happens in an uncontrolled situation I don't think you'll get into detail predictions. You may be able to get some kind of analysis of what is going on. You may be able to eventually get some answers about what happens in critical stress situations but. On the whole I don't think you can expect to account for the detailed behavior. Professor Lewis continued his discussion by remarking about the future and the possibility of today's findings being applied to future generations. I think all one can say and this is that. If you get well confirmed knowledge. That then the later generations will build on this they will utilize it in ways that you can't predict.

But if it is in fact well confirmed if it is really rigorous knowledge then in the future it is it is information that is going to have to be taken into account and. Any future theory that is attempting to encompass more phenomena than you have been able to handle will have to in some sense reduce to the theory that you have developed on the assumption that it is fairly well confirmed. It may be modified in in detail but it can't completely reject it in the sense that you have firm evidence that it is in at least approximately correct than any other theory is going to have to explain that plus more of one and that this gradually this gradual accumulation of knowledge it will have I think to be completely unpredictable effects on people who I just don't. I know of no way conjecturing how it would be used

in the same sense that I don't think a person working in 15th 16th century physics could have in any sense project predicted what the modern world would have looked like. This is just beyond the powers of of any person to do it with any accuracy occasionally people make. Predictions of that have come out and these get noted but I'm sure that there are dozens and dozens of other people who have made other predictions that didn't come out and these people are. Quite forgotten in their predictions. Yeah I said when I started. You asked how it would benefit people I think one must not forget that experience from physics that knowledge so often is used not for the benefit of man and I think there's this this danger and in the psychological knowledge is nearly as much as a physical college. These were the further observations of Dean regarding the application of

today's research findings from the progress that has been made on applying it mathematical learning theory to various. Experimental situations in the past 10 years it seems to me it is not unreasonable to hope for really substantial applications of the theory in the next several decades. One area which I have not mentioned at all as yet and which is particularly promising is the area of applications to what might be called teaching problems in the old fashioned sense. From my own standpoint there are some really promising possibilities of applying the quantitative results in learning theory to classical problems of teaching and such disciplines

as elementary arithmetic elementary reading and elementary language instruction. On the other hand when we discuss the possibilities of such applications it is important to emphasize that it is a mistake to expect tomorrow or the day after tomorrow that fundamental scientific advances made on the theory of behavior can immediately be applied in a serious way and not in some Pickwick in science to solve pressing problems of application such as problems of education or teaching or problems of social conflict. In all major countries in the world today massive support is being given to fundamental research in physics. The hope of those in governmental positions

and industry who are supporting this research is that new and spectacular applications of the kind which have followed from such fundamental research in the past will flow from this new fundamental research in physics. But in the past several decades there has been a very heartening education of the people who must make decisions about the amount of resources allocated to fundamental scientific research in the physical sciences. They have come to realize that it is not possible to put a tag on any particular piece of fundamental research and say yes this will be important for such and such an application. Yes this other piece of work will be important for this particular application.

The fundamental fact about fundamental scientific research is that it is impossible to predict in advance precisely what the applications will be. And this is true of fundamental research in the behavioral and social sciences as it is of such research in the physical sciences. My own feeling is that we are now beginning to approach problems of behavior in the same solid scientific way that we have been reproaching physical phenomena for the past hundred and fifty years. What we have got to have is a kind of faith that is supported physics and chemistry. That is the kind of faith which says that from the scientific research of a fundamental character

ultimately important applications will flow. This is not merely a blind faith. Because there is much historical evidence that whenever the fundamental character of a phenomenon is well understood we are then in a position to control and manipulate that phenomenon and precisely the same kind of thing. The same generalization that is which is held so well in the physical sciences. Well ultimately in the behavioral sciences using more specific examples such as the military or the world of diplomacy Professor Luce continued his discussion by pointing to various types of decision making. Well let's see. They seem to be two kinds of decisions here issued basically the one is let us let us consider the situation where we accidentally drop a bomb.

There is the decision made somehow to drop the bomb which by assumption is is an accidental dropping which presumably means a failure somewhere in our decision mechanism. We may have gotten some indication on the radar that would suggest an attack is taking place and our response is then set off and and gets out of control. Possibly part of the trouble here part of the problem here is to introduce a number of safeguards of checks and counter checks and ways of stopping. Who possibly has that has had a psychotic attack and initiate an attack or say a pilot of a plan. One of the main difficulties in introducing sufficient counter checks here is the very short time problem that exists and in a response to

an enemy attack we've got to have a retaliatory force that responds very quickly when in fact there is an attack because if it doesn't respond quickly it isn't going to respond at all. And so the number of safeguards that one can have is cut down every time there's a technological development that makes the attack faster. This is I think a primary fear about missiles but the attack will take a total of maybe 30 minutes from the time it set off to the time of arrival. And if we have 15 minutes of warning we will be very lucky. This then automatically reduces the number of safeguards one can have in the system. Under the assumption that our retaliatory force is open to destruction because if it's open to destruction you've got to retaliate before that destruction takes place.

Now supposing we have dropped a bomb accidentally The enemy is in the same position if their brutality forces. Open to destruction and they get an indication of an attack. They must respond immediately because they can't afford to take the chance. If on the other hand they're there will tell a Tory force is not easily destroyed. They can then afford to take the time to make the check to see whether this was in fact the beginning of an attack or an accidental. Explosion. And so it seems clear when when one thinks about it in this way and I must I must make it quite clear that these ideas are are certainly not original. In fact they're spelled out in great detail in Professor Morgenstern book. But it it it appears that

the nature of the decision making mechanism that you can can use in a situation like this is very dependent on the nature of the countermeasures you're going to take. And on. The rapidity of the attack decisions tend to take time. The inevitably delays. And if you have to respond quickly. If the very nature of your. Defense which in this case is it is it is the threat of a major retaliation if if that is got to be airborne within a certain few minutes of any indication of an attack. Then the decision mechanism has to be extraordinarily rapid. And this simply means you cannot have very many protective devices which in other words suggest that the situation right now is very dangerous. I think there is no question this is an extraordinarily dangerous time that with missiles

coming in. Reducing the time why and with a retaliatory force that is not very well protected. They could relatively easily be destroyed. There is the danger of a false attack occurring which is unfortunately large. It's much larger than it has been in the past 10 years. With this discussion of the application of research comes the inevitable question of ethics. Are there really ethical implications resulting from the fear of control of the human mind. Professor Lewis made this observation. We have certainly not evolved in any reasonable way to control the uses of physics. And I see nothing inherently different in a sense in the problem of controlling the use of psychological or or or generally behavioral science knowledge. This is this essentially the same ethical problem that exists with physical knowledge. It's not

as as acute a problem obviously since we know we don't have as powerful results in the behavioral sciences as powerful in the sense of. H-bombs and so on. Whether we will remains to be seen. Here. Happen. And. There will be this ethical problem. This remark supplied by Dr. Davidson points to the difference in the meaning and the U.S. age of the term he said. Well I think I'd like to separate if I can a kind of question that does often enough come up in businesses and corporations questions where the goal is fail Lee clearly defined as something like maximizing profits in the long run. Or some other

set of goals perhaps more complex than that but appropriate to a business enterprise and a much more general question which doesn't in itself define the goals to be sought which is how ought people to behave. The question how people ought to behave even in a business situation may of course in the end be a question of maximization too. But surely it wouldn't be simply a question of maximizing profits there would be a great many other things that one would want to take into consideration. So I suppose the right answer to your question of if I got the gist of it straight is as a as a philosopher interested in ethics. I'm interested in business ethics only so far as they are a special case. Our thanks to Dr. Donald Davidson of Stanford University also of Stanford Dean Patrick SU Pais and to our Duncan Luce professor of psychology at

the University of Pennsylvania for their participation on this discussion on the decision process. Next week you will hear Dr. Louis Jay Wess who is head of the department of psychiatry neurology and behavioral sciences at the University of Oklahoma and Dr. Robert Felix who is director of the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda Maryland as they discuss performance under stress on the next program from the series human behavior social and medical research consultant for today's program was Professor Clyde Coombs of the University of Michigan. We extend our special thanks to the Mental Health Research Institute of the University of Michigan for their assistance. Glenn Phillips speaking asking that you join us next week and thanking you for being with us at this time. This program has been produced by the University of Michigan broadcasting service under a grant in aid from the National Educational Television and Radio Center in cooperation with the National

Association of educational broadcasters. This is the end E.B. Radio Network.