TY - JOUR
T1 - Flexible versus structured support for reasoning
T2 - enhancing analytical reasoning through a flexible analytic technique
AU - Stromer-Galley, Jennifer
AU - Rossini, Patricia
AU - Kenski, Kate
AU - McKernan, Brian
AU - Clegg, Benjamin
AU - Folkestad, James
AU - Østerlund, Carsten
AU - Schooler, Lael
AU - Boichak, Olga
AU - Canzonetta, Jordan
AU - Martey, Rosa Mikeal
AU - Pavlich, Corey
AU - Tsetsi, Eric
AU - McCracken, Nancy
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Sarah Taylor and Roc Myers for their subject matter experience of intelligence analysis and structured analytic techniques. The experimentation software was developed by SRC., Inc. We wish to thank Deb Plochocki, Lou Nau, Andrew Whalen, Laura Simonetta, Ryan Conner, and the rest of the SRC team. We also acknowledge the contributions of several additional team members including: Yatish Hegde, Niraj Sitaula, Sarah Bolden, Erin Bartolo, Jerry Robinson, Jun Fang, Priya Harindranathan, Marcia Morales, Thomas Gallegos, Paige Odegard, Gregory Russel, Rhema Zlaten, Cayla Dorsey, Sophie Estep, Audrey Lew, Quincy Nolan, Sweeney Pandit, and William Wang. This research was supported by the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) via the Department of Interior National Business Center contract number 2017-16121900004. The U.S. Government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints for Government purposes notwithstanding any copyright annotation thereon. Disclaimer: The views and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies or endorsements, either expressed or implied, of IARPA, DoI/NBC, or the U.S. Government.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Structured analytic techniques (SATs) help the intelligence community reduce flaws in cognition that lead to faulty reasoning. To ascertain whether SATs provide benefits to reasoning we conducted an experiment within a web-based application, comparing three conditions: 1) unaided reasoning, 2) a prototypical order-based SAT and 3) a flexible, process-based SAT that we call TRACE. Our findings suggest that the more flexible SAT generated higher quality reasoning compared to the other conditions. Consequently, techniques and training that support flexible analytical processes rather than those that require a set sequence of steps may be more beneficial to intelligence analysis and complex reasoning. Keywords: structured analytical techniques, Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, tradecraft, cognitive biases, experiments.
AB - Structured analytic techniques (SATs) help the intelligence community reduce flaws in cognition that lead to faulty reasoning. To ascertain whether SATs provide benefits to reasoning we conducted an experiment within a web-based application, comparing three conditions: 1) unaided reasoning, 2) a prototypical order-based SAT and 3) a flexible, process-based SAT that we call TRACE. Our findings suggest that the more flexible SAT generated higher quality reasoning compared to the other conditions. Consequently, techniques and training that support flexible analytical processes rather than those that require a set sequence of steps may be more beneficial to intelligence analysis and complex reasoning. Keywords: structured analytical techniques, Analysis of Competing Hypotheses, tradecraft, cognitive biases, experiments.
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U2 - 10.1080/02684527.2020.1841466
DO - 10.1080/02684527.2020.1841466
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85095736700
SN - 0268-4527
VL - 36
SP - 279
EP - 298
JO - Intelligence and National Security
JF - Intelligence and National Security
IS - 2
ER -