An illuminating perspective on naturalistic decision-making.
The columnist David Brooks recently published his latest book, How to Know a Person (2023). The thesis is straightforward: a contrast between people he calls illuminators and those he calls diminishers. Here is how he describes the difference:
“In any collection of humans, there are diminishers and there are illuminators. Diminishers are so into themselves, they make others feel insignificant. They stereotype and label. If they learn one thing about you, they proceed to make a series of assumptions about who you must be.
Illuminators, on the other hand, have a persistent curiosity about other people. They have been trained or have trained themselves in the craft of understanding others. They know how to ask the right questions at the right times—so that they can see things, at least a bit, from another’s point of view. They shine the brightness of their care on people and make them feel bigger, respected, lit up.
Illuminators are a joy to be around.”
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Now, let’s try to stretch that contrast from individuals to conceptual approaches. The traditional decision research community, in large part, tries to demonstrate how flawed our human reasoning is, how untrustworthy, and how X. Going back to the work of Meehl (1954), the message is that human judgment can be outperformed by algorithms. The message seems to align with Brooks’ concept of diminishers—making people feel insignificant. I don’t want to suggest that this research tradition is joyless. The investigators are skilled, inventive, and enthusiastic about their design paradigms. It is a happy community. However, the takeaway is not encouraging. Readers come away doubting the rationality of everyday decisions—even doubting the capability of so-called experts. In fact, this research tradition takes special delight in showing how fallible experts are.
Now consider the naturalistic decision-making (NDM) community, which takes an opposite perspective on expertise. NDM researchers delight in opportunities to observe and interview people with expertise and learn a little about what makes them so effective. I see this approach as aligning with the illuminators that Brooks described.
The contrast is between being with someone who listens to you to spot inconsistencies in your statements and flaws in your reasoning and someone who listens to you to learn what they can, to pick up on some of the tacit knowledge you have acquired, and to gain insights from the experiences you describe.
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That’s why I consider myself so fortunate to be part of the NDM community and to have regular opportunities to interact with experts from all kinds of different fields. That’s why, for me, it never gets old. There are always discoveries to be made.
The perspective of the NDM community will be on display at the latest conference, NDM-17, in Auckland, New Zealand, July 1-5, 2024. It is another opportunity for NDM researchers and practitioners to hear about the latest projects, findings, and methods—and illuminate each other.
References
Brooks, D. (2023). How to know a person: The art of seeing others deeply and being deeply seen. New York: Random House.
Meehl, P. E. (1954). Clinical versus statistical prediction: A theoretical analysis and a review of the evidence. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Source link : https://www.psychologytoday.com/za/blog/seeing-what-others-dont/202406/illuminators-and-diminishers?amp
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Publish date : 2024-06-29 19:19:12
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